Skimmer lean.. whats going on?

[swiss1939]

So my tank is a month old and I left the skimmer off for the first month as I built up bacteria and minimal livestock for now which includes crabs, snails, amphipods and copepods. I've been feeding very minimally both phytoplankton every day and a few small pellets each week just to keep the detritivors happy, as my tank is too sterile being too new. I started seeing more detritus floating around in the water, including amphipod molts, etc so I decided to start using the skimmer. I have a Red Octopus 110SSS skimmer which was off for the first month. I turned it on yesterday for the first time to see how much gunk it would clean out of the water and it ran for a day perfectly creating a green skimmate in the collection cup. I turned it off today to feed phytoplankton again this morning and turned it back on after waiting 2 hrs. It no longer created a foam anymore and looks more like a pot of boiling water which the BRSTV video calls a lean skimmer. So my question is if this is normal for a very young tank with minimal nutrient loads to basically not create a foam in the skimmer because ther is not enough junk to clean out? If so, I assume this means it ran fine the first day cause it had plenty to clean from the first month but ran out of junk to skim after restarting.

I also checked to see if it was clogged or something.. took it out and cleaned it completely. Found some pieces of branching seaweed in the pump propeller which I removed but did not solve the issue.

Any suggestions appreciated!

 

[ichthyogeek]

Essentially yes. Protein skimmers work through the creation of foam to get rid of a lot of organics in the water. The proteins and fats in the water in addition to all of the salts in the water help in the formation of foam. Without those proteins and fats, a skimmer can't work as well, because it needs those proteins and fats to maintain the foam to get rid of it. Just make sure to clean the neck from time to time or whenever you remove the skimmer cup.

It's kind of like when you wash your hands when you've been handling something oily vs when you've been not handling a lot of stuff. When you wash your hands and they have oil on them, the organics (lipids/oils and proteins) help attach to the bubbles and make a much larger lather than if you were to just wash your hands after not handling something oily.

 

[swiss1939]

Thanks for confirming what I was guessing the case was. I assume when people have very low bio load tanks, they don't run their skimmers regularly? So I will try only running my skimmer for a day every other week as of now until I get a fish or two in there.

 

[drmdvl]

I would turn your skimmer on and let it run to break in and develop a slime coat, may take a couple weeks. Despite having low organics skimmed out now, you'll get the benefit of aeration.

 

[swiss1939]

The skimmer was broken in at the beginning of the month and built up a slime coat over the past month. I actually turned it on partially to see if my ph would rise, instead it has stayed rock steady at 8.0 regardless of skimmer on or off, so I have no problem with co2 in my tank.