Warnock,
Great minds think alike <grin> - I wrote about that technique for a book I have coming out this month. One problem is how to control a skimmer that is running at high production (see below).
I feel that most people run their skimmers too dry anyway. You can pull a lot more POC by running them very wet, however, I didn't take it as far as using the wet skimmate as the ONLY water change for the tank. How often do you run the skimmer like that?
My only concern is that I often hear people say, "I haven't done a water change in X amount of time" - only to hear later that things went south a few months later. I once had a women tell me that I was full of cr*p for telling people that they needed to do a 25% water change every two weeks on their feshwater tanks - she hadn't done one in three years and her fish were fine. Of course, the new fish that I sold her that day died because they couldn't adapt to her tank's 5.5 pH<grin>.
I bet that unless you have some really delicate corals, or unless it is really crowded, a 90 gallon reef can go as long as your's without many water changes at all.
Jay Hemdal
From "Advanced marine Aquarium Techniques":
Foam fractionator control ââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“
In the past, aquarists would tend to run their foam fractionators / protein skimmers very dry. The foam produced would stick to the effluent cup almost like cotton candy. In some cases, the skimming action would virtually cease unless there was a large influx of organics into the system. As people eventually determined that running these units "wet" rather than "dry" insured that proper skimming was taking place, as well as helping to remove particulate organic carbon (POC) a side effect began to appear - skimmers overflowing their collection tanks. Depending on the aquarium's set up, a skimmer that ran too wet might flood the floor outside the aquarium, or drain the sump causing the life support system to stop working. There seems to be some correlation between skimmer output and barometric pressure. Many aquarists have discovered that their skimmers will overflow during or just following the passing of a major storm. Combine barometric variability with all the other factors that influence skimmer production such as pump speed, nutrient loading and presence of oils in the water and it is no wonder that running skimmers at maximum capacity frequently causes overflows. Since these overflows cannot be avoided, how can their effect be mitigated? Many aquarists simply design their skimmer collection vessels so that if fills up, the excess liquid returns to the aquarium's sump. While this contains any water loss, it does return skimmate to the system, negating the benefit gained during a certain period. A better solution is to install a float switch inside the skimmer collection container. If the level of skimmate threatens to rise and overflow the container, the switch will automatically turn off the pump driving the skimmer, stopping the device for a time, but at least not returning skimmate to the system.
