Any downside for this skimmer?

[SifuMemphis]

Are there downsides to having a "too big" protein skimmer? A vertex omega 150 is rated for a much bigger tank, and I use one in a 49 gallon.

Some say its fine, some argue that it will produce inconsistent skimming. Thoughts?

 

[Webslinger]

Like they say bigger is better. Once you get it dialed in you'll be fine.

 

[twilliard]

I run my Orphek helix 5000 on 80 gallons of water.
Will it over skim? Yup it sure will if I let it

 

[SifuMemphis]

Awesome Go big or go home right? haha

 

[sabunim88]

If you feed heavy go for it. But skimmers pull a lot more out than what you think so you could be dosing vitamins and minerals just to have them sucked up by your skimmer.

Now that my system is at a good maturing level I **** it off but a couple of days a week to keep nutrient levels up and dollars I spent dosing in the tank.

 

[twilliard]

Awesome Go big or go home right? haha

Here is the thing about skimmers.
Way to many have skimmers that either don't have good control or are not efficient enough.
Like with my skimmer I can control water flow, air intake, and water discharge.
I can adjust my skimmer based on the nutrient readings from the ICP testing.
Its not about big... its about control

 

[SifuMemphis]

If you feed heavy go for it. But skimmers pull a lot more out than what you think so you could be dosing vitamins and minerals just to have them sucked up by your skimmer.

Now that my system is at a good maturing level I **** it off but a couple of days a week to keep nutrient levels up and dollars I spent dosing in the tank.

Yeah my tank i still fairly new, been up since June 30th. Parameters are pretty stable, and Nitrates hang around 2-3ppm, Phos reading at 0. As far as vitamins and stuff goes, I am not sure if I should be dosing or not. For now, water change one a week or so should replenish enough back into the tank hopefully.

 

[sabunim88]

Just watch your stuff and you'll notice a change of your attentive enough to wether or not you need to add more stuff. I lost arcana and part of a torch coral died cause I was too proud to think that just doing big water changes was enough. Now that I'm back to dosing and watching my parameters I'm making a come back. ticks me off I lost some good pieces but then lesson was valuable as I've never had this much "success" with corals.

 

[eea60]

Having an oversized skimmer will do nothing but help keep the water cleaner. I feed heavily and have always run a skimmer rated for 3-5 times my tank size. Usually skimmer ratings are for low stocked tanks so you need a skimmer rated for 1.5-2 times the water volume. I have found that true for cheap and higher costing skimmers. I don't think you are going to significantly pull vitamins or anything like that out. I would like to see scientific evidence that skimming does that. The corals and fish may use them but without knowing at what rate that happens how can you say a skimmer is a major or even significant cause for depletion. Each coral would also take or not take certain vitamins out of the water at varying rates. You also dose vitamins and amino acids when you put food in. Go big and good luck

 

[Harold Green]

The bigger skimmers certainly create a lot of air interchange to the water in the system. It's easy enough to adjust the skimmer so it pulls a very dry skim mate removing no more material than you wish.

 

[eea60]

Depending on what type and how many corals you have you can usually keep trace and minor elements up by water changes. You do need to dose calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium to keep those levels up as calcium and alkalinity are depleted the quickest. Find what works best for your particular tank and corals and go for it. I would suggest if you begin an amino or any other similar dose (not the big 3) then start low and build up from there.

 

[sabunim88]

My only other concern would be that skimmers are meant to pull ammonia first of all and that can interrupt the nitrogen cycle too much and not leave enough byproducts of the cycle to keep stuff like the bacteria in your live rock going or the nitrogen for you photosynthesis cycle for your corals.