How to tell if skimmer is undersized?

[diablo243]

I have a 90ga DT and a 30ga sump/fuge, I'm running a Vertex 130 skimmer and the thing is a beast. Tank is not crazy stocked, 1 yellow tang, 1 niger trigger, 1 carpenter wrasse, 2 clowns, 1 lawnmower blenny and 2 cardinals. All fish are on the smaller size, clean up crew is on the light side and have a mix of several corals soft and hard. I recently started having a nitrate prob and am just stumped about the cause, I feed once a day l, frozen food and not a crazy amount. The skimmer is a total work horse with a nice thick dry skimmate and runs flawlessly all day every day. In research I see most consensus is that skimmer is on the edge of my volume and load but if it's a workhorse doing it's job how would I know if I should go bigger? Will bigger simply give me more volume or will it affect the speed for which it skims? Thanks for the feedback.

 

[mcarroll]

Your skimmer should spend at least part of the day "idle".

If it does not, then your skimmer is never "catching up" with the load of organics that it is able to skim.

 

[diablo243]

So by idle would that mean the bubbles just stay in the neck or would that mean any skim coming into cup would be clear bubbles?

 

[serkel]

This is going to be interesting. I've asked myself the same question.

 

[bif24701]

I would say if you are unable to keep your nutrients "low". Keep in mind this also includes other export methods.

 

[bif24701]

I have a 90ga DT and a 30ga sump/fuge, I'm running a Vertex 130 skimmer and the thing is a beast. Tank is not crazy stocked, 1 yellow tang, 1 niger trigger, 1 carpenter wrasse, 2 clowns, 1 lawnmower blenny and 2 cardinals. All fish are on the smaller size, clean up crew is on the light side and have a mix of several corals soft and hard. I recently started having a nitrate prob and am just stumped about the cause, I feed once a day l, frozen food and not a crazy amount. The skimmer is a total work horse with a nice thick dry skimmate and runs flawlessly all day every day. In research I see most consensus is that skimmer is on the edge of my volume and load but if it's a workhorse doing it's job how would I know if I should go bigger? Will bigger simply give me more volume or will it affect the speed for which it skims? Thanks for the feedback.

I ran a lightly stocked 180 for 6 months with a SRO-1000, you can tune a skimmer to pull out more DOCs by setting it slightly wetter skim.

 

[mcarroll]

So by idle would that mean the bubbles just stay in the neck or would that mean any skim coming into cup would be clear bubbles?

Where it just bubbles in the neck while organics are at the lowest level it can get them. Eventually they will build up again and the skimmer will begin removing bubbles from the water.