I need a sanity check!

TastyScrants · Jan 25, 2022

Tank details:

150L volume

9 small fish (clownfish, halicores wrasse, 3 chromis, 1 sunspot goby, 1 yellow face rose goby, Midas blenny, royal gramma)

I was running a RedSea reef skim 300 and this was overkill. I couldn’t run this on for a short period each day as the water levels changes would cause salinity swings.

I was feeding 2-3 cubes a day plus masstick and reef energy.

I decided to lose the skimmer when my nitrate and phosphate were stuck at 0ppm. I set up a refugium with chaeto instead and I’ve been having good success. Nutirents were stable for a while at 2ppm nitrate and 0.04p phosphate.

Recently though my nitrate is around 1ppm and phosphate has climbed up to 0.1ppm and causing some green hair algae. I ran some phosguard and reduced feeding to 1 cube a day only but my fish are hungry now. This brought phosphate down but they started rising as soon as the phosgard exhausted

I’m thinking I may need to go back to using a skimmer. Can anyone recommend the right size I’d need as the RSK300 was too much.

would I be better off running a skimmer 24/7 better rated to my tank? I don’t have space in my sump to run a skimmer and refugium it had to be one or the other.

Billldg · Jan 25, 2022

First off, Sanity check, you have to remember we ALL are Reef nuts!!! ;Hilarious

I have always run my skimmers 24/7. I had a Reef Octopus 150SSS on my previous 120 gal tank, and now, use a 250SSS on my 225 gal tank. Both were overkill, and, I still had no issue. Skimmers do not effect water level and salinity. My current skimmer, the Reef Octopus 250SSS is way oversized for my 225 gal tank, and I have no issue. I do skim dry.

Jubei2006 · Jan 25, 2022

Run a reef octopus classic 1000 HOB for my 29 gallon (104L) 24/7. Doesn't seem to be overkill on my tank.

TastyScrants · Jan 25, 2022

Billldg said:
First off, Sanity check, you have to remember we ALL are Reef nuts!!! ;Hilarious

I have always run my skimmers 24/7. I had a Reef Octopus 150SSS on my previous 120 gal tank, and now, use a 250SSS on my 225 gal tank. Both were overkill, and, I still had no issue. Skimmers do not effect water level and salinity. My current skimmer, the Reef Octopus 250SSS is way oversized for my 225 gal tank, and I have no issue. I do skim dry.

Thanks for sharing your experiences there. I always here good things about reef octo

Apologies, I wasn’t clear in my initial post, I meant that I tried running it for 12hrs a day to reduce efficiency but found due to the volume of water inside the skimmer, I was having salinity fluctuations as for 12hrs a day my system volume changed by a few litres causing the ATO to add RO water.

Billldg · Jan 25, 2022

BLineDisaster said:
Thanks for sharing your experiences there. I always here good things about reef octo

Apologies, I wasn’t clear in my initial post, I meant that I tried running it for 12hrs a day to reduce efficiency but found due to the volume of water inside the skimmer, I was having salinity fluctuations as for 12hrs a day my system volume changed by a few litres causing the ATO to add RO water.

The fluctuations is where you just need to let the skimmer run its course. It will take in a bit of the overall tank water volume, you just need to adjust the salinity from there.

I like Reef Octopus skimmers simply because I learned they are so easy to dial in and adjust. This is where a DC pump on a skimmer helps.