Skimmer efficiency (or defieciency)

[Baldwin]

This excerpt was taken from- The Coral Tank from Canada 1350 display thread in the large reef tank forums.

I spent an evening with some of the guys who are building this tank, and got to exchange some very useful information. We also sat in a speech by professor Ken Feldman a chemist at Penn State. He has been doing a lot of research on skimmer efficiency and shared what exactly is in skimmate with the audience. I also, had the priveleage of sitting with Professor Feldman at one of the Dinner banquets and had the opportunity to learn more about his findings. I thought that maybe some of you reefers would like to hear a bit about this info.

Anyways about 4 or 5 pages ago you said something like skimmers only remove on average 20% ( I think it was 20) but carbon can remove 80??? Did I misunderstand that? are you telling me that Carbon is 4 times more effective then a skimmer?

I'm not trying to answer this question for Mr. Wilson, but I sat with the professor who shared his info on skimmers at one of the banquets. They only remove 20-30% of organics, and they remove a small percent of elements ie. calcium. Carbon performs a bit better by removing 30+% of organics, and it depends upon the type of carbon used as to whether you get that good of performance or not. He said that ROX from bulk reef supply was the best that he had tested. Basically what he told me, and I think that he mentioned in the actual speech is that most of your other 40-70+% of the waste removal is performed by life within in the system. Now that could be sponges detrivores, and who knows it would be different in every system. IMO this is the best reason to atleast seed a system with quality live rock because science doesn't really know the exact answers on this yet, and everyone's system will be different.