Protein skimmers on or off?

[tactical_XJ]

So I have a few questions, what are the pros and cons to turn off your skimmers, I want to boost up my nits for coral growth and colors but don’t want to dose nothing else at the moment.

 

[Flippers4pups]

So I have a few questions, what are the pros and cons to turn off your skimmers, I want to boost up my nits for coral growth and colors but don’t want to dose nothing else at the moment.

Before doing so, whats your water pramameters?

 

[HexaReef]

Whats your bioload?

 

[rockskimmerflow]

Unless you have any issues with having a higher evap rate, I'd suggest trying pulling the skimmer cup off and letting the foam just overflow slightly so no waste is collected but you don't short circuit your gas exchange rate by shutting off the skimmer altogether. I find it's a softer way to test if the tank is going to benefit from having more of the waste that the skimmer would pull out stay in solution.

 

[tactical_XJ]

my parameters are pretty good, did notice my calc doser was empty, put a new bottle,
my calc dropped to 384 ( hanna checker ),
alk is at 11,
PH is at 8.4
nitrate is at 0 ppm
phos 0 ppm
temp is at 79.5
salinity went a little to low for me, 1.021

currently in the tank I have 4 fish, mandarin, foxface, royal gramma, and a flame angel, I do plan on adding more fish to the tank but dealing with 3 tanks is killing me lol,
my skimmer is a ASM GC3 with the sedra 3500 pump.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Turning off your skimmer will definitely help increase your nitrates and phosphates. I have ran my tank with both skimmer off and on. I really though running the skimmer would help with decreasing "organic" Nitrogen in my tank but my N-DOC tests showed no difference. The only thing my skimmer did was make me have to dose more NO3 and PO4. Also I noticed my alkalinity and calcium uptake has reduced with the skimmer on.

 

[DonnieDarko]

Like said before depends on corals trying to keep and bioload. Also the size of skimmer. If you skimmer is too large, then running it half the day or on a timer may be ideal. Mostly SPS tanks need skimmer for best color but that is not always true. Every tank can be so different based on many factors.