Skimmerless, will it work?

[Yas]

Its very interesting observations and there is some possible explanation to this. There is two sources for NH4/NH3 in a matured reef system - fish and bacteria. IMO - bacteria is the most important source in a mature reef with sand/DSB/lot of LS

The sponges you use for nitrification is a well known method in Europe - However - IMO - its important to have a fast flow through.

I have not the same opinion as Hans-Werner according to nitrification in a reef system - but he knows that so give him only a half like for his post I´m 100 % with him according to skimmers - however I run a skimmer in my tank (an oversized skimmer) but its only running for gas exchange and it is tuned in order to get as low amount of skimate as possible - just aerate. Maybe I empty 0.1 litre skimate every month or two.

Please come back with information: Your pH span during 24 hours , time when you measured 0.25 in NH4 compared with light on or off, pH at that time and method of measurements for NH4.

Sincerely Lasse

Hi Lasse, thank you for your post! I had quick glance at your thread. Just awesome!

About flow in the sponge section, coincidentally, I put a small water pump to agitate a bit. I stop my wave flow at the main tank once or twice a day so that my slow-eating mandarinfish can eat things at the bottom of the tank. But when I do it for 10 minutes, gas exchange in the sump is lost. I wanted to prevent it.

Lasse, I don't have Apex system. So I can't do 24H monitoring, but I'm very curious about monitoring maybe once in 4 or 5 hours. I use the following test kits.

NH4 Tetra
NO3/NO4 Red Sea
PO4 Hanna
pH Tetra

I would like to replace those Tetra kits. My Tetra kits could be too old. So I'll have to start from searching alternative test kits for NH4 and pH. I have zero chamical knowledge, and I can't even do the guess work. So all I can do is just test. But if you can help me out from the data I got, that's great!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yes, I use two wave makers and the one is plugged with a backup buttery. So O2 should be fine. I'm even considering to have a small wave pump in my sump to have better aeration in the sump.

I would not assume that gas exchange is necessarily complete. With perfect gas exchange, there would be no pH swing day to night, and yet almost all tanks see that happen. Complete gas exchange is much harder than people assume.

 

[Yas]

I would not assume that gas exchange is necessarily complete. With perfect gas exchange, there would be no pH swing day to night, and yet almost all tanks see that happen. Complete gas exchange is much harder than people assume.

Randy, could you tell me how I can make sure my gas exchange is at the acceptable level? Currently, all I can say is my fish look healthy, but that's just my feeling, not concrete test result or anything.

 

[shred5]

I have been in the reef hobby 30+ years I have seen allot of people go skimmerless , this is nothing new period it has been debated a million times.. Can you do it sure but every person I know who did unless running a small tank has gone back to a skimmer. It is simple why that is.. It is the easiest method to keep a reef aquarium. Far easier than doing extra water changes, far easier than maintaining a fuge. Plus it can handle disasters far better like a few few fish dying. A algae filter or fuge can not grow algae fast enough to make up for that especially if you cant get to the fish or what ever dies. so guess where the algae grows?

Plus it is by far the best for gas exchange and maintaining ph. Want to start dumping kalk in to help with ph....

Another thing is do not believe everything you read on the forums. I have seen so many scammers that say they are doing something and they are not or as long and have not. Some people like to exaggerate a little.

Remember success in this hobby is not measured in months or even a years it is being able to maintain a tank for many years.

Remember I am not saying it can not be done or has not been done I am just saying most people eventually go back to a skimmer.

For some reason some people who go skimmerless feel like some sort of pioneer. When I first got in the hobby there was no skimmers in the U.S. yet or very hard to get. We started with trickle filters and grew maco algae in the tank. Some people had more macro algae than corals.

 

[Erick Camargo]

I removed the skimmer form my tank cuz the RSM250 skimmer is not good enough for the propose. Too much micro bubbles, high temperature on the pump and every evaporation from the water changes the skimming level inside the skimmer body.. and the pump noise is terrible!

 

[Yas]

I have been in the reef hobby 30+ years I have seen allot of people go skimmerless , this is nothing new period it has been debated a million times.. Can you do it sure but every person I know who did unless running a small tank has gone back to a skimmer. It is simple why that is.. It is the easiest method to keep a reef aquarium. Far easier than doing extra water changes, far easier than maintaining a fuge. Plus it can handle disasters far better like a few few fish dying. A algae filter or fuge can not grow algae fast enough to make up for that especially if you cant get to the fish or what ever dies. so guess where the algae grows?

Plus it is by far the best for gas exchange and maintaining ph. Want to start dumping kalk in to help with ph....

Another thing is do not believe everything you read on the forums. I have seen so many scammers that say they are doing something and they are not or as long and have not. Some people like to exaggerate a little.

Remember success in this hobby is not measured in months or even a years it is being able to maintain a tank for many years.

Remember I am not saying it can not be done or has not been done I am just saying most people eventually go back to a skimmer.

For some reason some people who go skimmerless feel like some sort of pioneer. When I first got in the hobby there was no skimmers in the U.S. yet or very hard to get. We started with trickle filters and grew maco algae in the tank. Some people had more macro algae than corals.

Thank you for your openness, Dave. I appreciate your opinion. That's why I felt scary doing this and wanted to ask. I was so supersized so many people are doing it. But, yes, I can see what you mean. If someone fails, he may not want to talk about it in public simply because it may not look them cool. So I can imagine things discussed here are not necessarily true.

"For some reason some people who go skimmerless feel like some sort of pioneer." This comment is funny because I almost felt like that. Ha ha! I knew some people have already done it before, but because this was, for me, a very surprising fact, I was like "what's going on? Is it real?" I almost felt like a pioneer. You can laugh at me because I'm laughing at myself!

Don't worry, I keep my skimmer. It's quite new, and I can't throw it away.

 

[Yas]

I removed the skimmer form my tank cuz the RSM250 skimmer is not good enough for the propose. Too much micro bubbles, high temperature on the pump and every evaporation from the water changes the skimming level inside the skimmer body.. and the pump noise is terrible!

Erick, it's too bad you got something that didn't work for you. Mine is different. It's working very well, I control sump water level using a solenoid valve, and noise is very very low. For me, the thing was the combination of well-working skimmer and also-well-working chaeto. For me, this is a strange symptom because when something works good it's almost always good, but in my case I want to alleviate the effect a bit.

 

[Lasse]

I would like to replace those Tetra kits. My Tetra kits could be too old. So I'll have to start from searching alternative test kits for NH4 and pH. I have zero chamical knowledge, and I can't even do the guess work. So all I can do is just test. But if you can help me out from the data I got, that's great!

There is a lot of misunderstanding about ammonia levels and how toxic it is. In Swedish (and many other language) we have different name for the ammonia ion (NH4) and for the ammonia gas (NH3) – British English -> ammonia and ammoniac -> the same in Swedish – ammonium and amoniak. Its only the ammonium gas (NH3, ammoniac) that are toxic – the ion NH4 is nontoxic. However – the percentage of each species in the NH4/NH3 is temperature and pH depended. If you have 25 degree C and a pH at 8 – the toxic NH3 is 5 % of the NH4/NH3 complex -> pH 8,5 -> 15 % is in the toxic form. Calculated on your 0.25 ppm measurement -> at pH 8 -> NH3 is around 0.013 ppm; pH 8.5 -> NH3 is around 0,038 ppm. This means that you probably did not have toxic levels in your aquaria. There is on test – that I have not try because its difficult to get in Europe – that only test the toxic form – Seachem alert – and its indicate if the NH3 level rise above 0.05 ppm

NH4 itself it’s no poison – it’s the nutrient that most algae prefer. That’s the reason why I´m like nitrification filters that in a fast way take away the NH4 but a good and large fuge will take it also.

And a fuge with a good flow and lot of growing Chaeto (producing oxygen and a large surface) is a number one nitrification system also. It has been shown in freshwater with dense growth of Elodea.



Sincerely Lasse

 

[Lasse]

I have been in the reef hobby 30+ years I have seen allot of people go skimmerless , this is nothing new period it has been debated a million times.. Can you do it sure but every person I know who did unless running a small tank has gone back to a skimmer. It is simple why that is.. It is the easiest method to keep a reef aquarium. Far easier than doing extra water changes, far easier than maintaining a fuge. Plus it can handle disasters far better like a few few fish dying. A algae filter or fuge can not grow algae fast enough to make up for that especially if you cant get to the fish or what ever dies. so guess where the algae grows?

Plus it is by far the best for gas exchange and maintaining ph. Want to start dumping kalk in to help with ph....

Another thing is do not believe everything you read on the forums. I have seen so many scammers that say they are doing something and they are not or as long and have not. Some people like to exaggerate a little.

Remember success in this hobby is not measured in months or even a years it is being able to maintain a tank for many years.

Remember I am not saying it can not be done or has not been done I am just saying most people eventually go back to a skimmer.

For some reason some people who go skimmerless feel like some sort of pioneer. When I first got in the hobby there was no skimmers in the U.S. yet or very hard to get. We started with trickle filters and grew maco algae in the tank. Some people had more macro algae than corals.

I have been running skimmerless tanks in the past but in my new aquaria I have an oversized skimmer - but of only one reason - gas exchange. I run it very, very dry and with this skimmer I have now I can do that and have a high air intake and water flow - without any microbubbles in the display. the skimmer its the best gas exchanger you can have.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[shred5]

Thank you for your openness, Dave. I appreciate your opinion. That's why I felt scary doing this and wanted to ask. I was so supersized so many people are doing it. But, yes, I can see what you mean. If someone fails, he may not want to talk about it in public simply because it may not look them cool. So I can imagine things discussed here are not necessarily true.

"For some reason some people who go skimmerless feel like some sort of pioneer." This comment is funny because I almost felt like that. Ha ha! I knew some people have already done it before, but because this was, for me, a very surprising fact, I was like "what's going on? Is it real?" I almost felt like a pioneer. You can laugh at me because I'm laughing at myself!

Don't worry, I keep my skimmer. It's quite new, and I can't throw it away.

Sometime typing a post sound worse than it is.

Well most people leave this hobby quietly and do not say much they just stop posting, doesn't matter if something bad happened or not.
But a few people are just flat out liars trying to get raises out of people, it is the internet now a days I guess. For example: This was a long time ago on another forum in a thread on Not doing water changes this guy post these pic of his reef. He said it was like 3 years without a water change and he has all these hard to keep corals and anemones like a magnifica anemone. To keep it short someone found a thread by him where it was a build thread and he was claiming his tank was only 3 months old.

Most people are honest in this hobby and a few just exaggerate a little.

Like I said a reef can be kept without a skimmer just more work especially on bigger tanks..

Like I said we did not have skimmers in the early saltwater days and the very beginning of the reef hobby. They were developed to make life easier and do a better job. Will something come out to do a better job? Maybe.

 

[Sea MunnKey]

I "suck" when I first started in this hobby and still AM ... . Sucky as always, Me ... the only time when you don't suck is when you hit the pinnacle of Excellence in Reefing ... No, Never Ever!!!

 

[Frag's]

My tank was running skimmerless, for the last 3! years and for the last 2! years It only had rodi top up and maybe food one time a week, As ;Smuggrin had ;Dummy;Dummy and a new home, And all the gear was off so only the life in the sump was keeping it going,,,,, I did take out all the sps and lps but on the rock the sps was coming back and had more fish and lots of life,,, The pic is from the last week before the big strip and a clip of the sump working,,

 

[Jr'sReef]

My tank was running skimmerless, for the last 3! years and for the last 2! years It only had rodi top up and maybe food one time a week, As ;Smuggrin had ;Dummy;Dummy and a new home, And all the gear was off so only the life in the sump was keeping it going,,,,, I did take out all the sps and lps but on the rock the sps was coming back and had more fish and lots of life,,, The pic is from the last week before the big strip and a clip of the sump working,,

Looking at your display I did notice something similar in my skimmerless tank, and that was that my zoas/palys (not all), and some other corals that I had purchased turned a brownish color after sometime. Not sure if it was coincidence or if it directly related to the fact that we don't skim

 

[Yas]

I "suck" when I first started in this hobby and still AM ... . Sucky as always, Me ... the only time when you don't suck is when you hit the pinnacle of Excellence in Reefing ... No, Never Ever!!!

Sea MunnKey, when you say "sucky as always," you mean water change?

 

[Yas]

My tank was running skimmerless, for the last 3! years and for the last 2! years It only had rodi top up and maybe food one time a week, As ;Smuggrin had ;Dummy;Dummy and a new home, And all the gear was off so only the life in the sump was keeping it going,,,,, I did take out all the sps and lps but on the rock the sps was coming back and had more fish and lots of life,,, The pic is from the last week before the big strip and a clip of the sump working,,

Wow, this is very interesting. You feed them in your sump! Looks like a matured sump though.

 

[Yas]

Looking at your display I did notice something similar in my skimmerless tank, and that was that my zoas/palys (not all), and some other corals that I had purchased turned a brownish color after sometime. Not sure if it was coincidence or if it directly related to the fact that we don't skim

Jr'Reef, I'm interested in this as well. I want to achieve colorful corals, not pale, not brownish.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Randy, could you tell me how I can make sure my gas exchange is at the acceptable level? Currently, all I can say is my fish look healthy, but that's just my feeling, not concrete test result or anything.

O2 meters are expensive and O2 kits may not be very precise. I’ve never used either one. So I don’t have a good answer.

 

[Yas]

O2 meters are expensive and O2 kits may not be very precise. I’ve never used either one. So I don’t have a good answer.

That's ok, Randy. Thank you! But I understand I have to at least keep an eye on it.

 

[Cae]

Yes, I use two wave makers and the one is plugged with a backup buttery. So O2 should be fine. I'm even considering to have a small wave pump in my sump to have better aeration in the sump.

Sounds great, good luck with it all and keep us posted cause I would like to see the results after 12 months.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

If the only thing we are using a skimmer for anymore is gas exchange I know of many less expensive and less noisy options. How about the old fashion bubble stone? I've also seen that in some supercharged refugiums the algae respiration alone was enough to raise the ph of a system.