reefology1
New member
From a chemistry point of view, assuming we do at least 10% monthly water changes, can we pull out too much of something eventually throwing our system out of balance?
I'm not sure waht "overskimming " means exactly.
Water cahnges replenis h major, minor and trace elements and pull excesses back toward starting ratios.
Generally, skimming's effect on corals depends on the corals kept along with other variables like :GAC use and feeding for example.IME.
Some corals with higher hetrotrophic needs ; xenia , capnella(kenya tree),ricordea, and nemenzohoplyllia( fox coral) for example do better in lightly skimmed water . Probably because there is more DOC, in a variety of organic campounds in the water, which they take up .
Others like many sps, zoanthus , and some favia do better in more heavily skimmed water.
Many like calaustrea, euhpylllia, gorgonia, sacrophyton, sinularia and nepthea do reasonably well in either case.
It should be noted skimming though it does remove some particulate matter and amphipathic organic compounds is also a very good source of aeration promoting beneficial gas exchange.
IMO no but you can oversize a skimmer so it barely works.
Feed more often and better foods, go for ulns through carbon dosing, decrease bubble size, better surface skimming, and add more livestock.
Say you do have an oversize skimmer for the system size you have, is there anything you can do to improve its performance.
If you mean produce darker drier skimmate ,then adjusting the water column in the skimmer to a lower level will usually produce a higher and drier column of foam. Not sure that's and improvement ;though. it will save on the amount of water exported. Turning it on and off on a timer is another option but then the aeration will also be reduced.
Sometimes, there just aren't enough amphipathic organics in the water for much to be trapped in the air/water interface along the bubbles' surfaces to create concentrated skimmate.
In theory, a skimmer might be able to remove enough nutrients from the water column that some corals might starve, but that seems hard to accomplish in reality. Is your system having some sort of problem, or is this more a question about getting ready for a purchase?
I've read it's more like 18%with GAC in the 30% range The question for me is which organics are in the the skimmer is pulling out , whether they are all harmful, whether some are useful and to what extent they are replaced via feeding and or photosynhthetic activity and stuff like coral slime,and other exudates.