Bubble of Skimmer
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Yes, the skimmer will function normally as long as the reconstituted water meets the specifications of seawater and, with this salt, it is possible to do so.
Best regards
Best regards
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Until you get organic matter in the water somehow (say, fish foods, creatures in the water, etc.) you should not expect to be able to collect foam/skimmate. But as noted, you will make bubbles, just not much foam.
When I had just begun this hobby, I test my skimmer in a freshwater aquarium and I can't see any bubble in it. When you say a freshwater + salt will produce a bubble, does it mean the salt is the one that make a skimmer produce a bubble?
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Yes, bubbles are made better in seawater than fresh, even with similar amounts of organic material.
I discuss such effects here:
What is Skimming? by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-08/rhf/index.php
from it:
Why does skimming work better in saltwater than in freshwater?
There are two fundamental reasons that skimming is more effective in seawater than in freshwater. One is the reduced solubility of organics, especially hydrophobic ones. Because many organics are less soluble in saltwater than in fresh, they are more easily squeezed out of it to an air/water interface, and collected as foam. This is the basis for the well-known salting-out effect of proteins. Quoting from a basic biochemistry text: "At sufficiently high ionic strength a protein may be almost completely precipitated from solution, an effect called salting-out."
A second reason for less efficient skimming of freshwater relates to bubble formation and coalescence. It turns out that air bubbled into seawater forms smaller bubbles than if the same device bubbled into freshwater.1-4 The possible reasons for this have been discussed in the scientific literature, but the exact reason is not universally agreed upon.
Despite the fact that skimmers usually produce larger bubbles in freshwater, and that organics are often more soluble in freshwater, it is not impossible to skim freshwater. Rivers from certain areas of the northeastern United States sometimes have foam on them, which comes from tree sap and other natural organics that enter the water. They have a low solubility in water, and are easily collected as foam in a natural skimming action.
