Skimmer running 14 hours a day?

[hilde123]

I have a 180 gallon mixed reef (with 4 fish) with 55 gal refugium and 25 gal sump. I just installed a new Reeflo ORCA 200 skimmer, so far I have been quite happy with. I had to feed the skimmer with my secondary return pump (Iwaki MD30RLXT) which I previously only ran during daylight hours. The MD30 and the Reeflo Dart needlewheel together pull over 200 watts of power. Over a month this should save In order to save a little power and reduce heating load during the daylight hours I want to run the skimmer at night (along with the secondary return/feed pump) for 14 hours. If I calculate correctly this shoudl save about 15-20 a month as compared to running it 24-7. As the skimmer is pretty oversized and I am running ozone I would think 14 hours of skimming would be suffiecient to keep water clarity acceptable. Does anyone run a skimmer this way, what are the potential drawbacks? Thanks for the comments.

 

[hilde123]

bump

 

[john baker]

Your bio load through the lighting period will be higher due to feeding and waste from livestock. You would be better off running it at lights on and for a few hours after lights out. I did this on one of my tanks and I found it worked better, I had less to detritus to siphon.

 

[hilde123]

John:

Thanks for the suggestions I 'll try to modify the time period to catch more of the afternoon/evening (lighting period). I know ther are plenty of people out there trying to save power in these time, nobody elese has tried reducing runtime on their skimmers?

 

[hilde123]

Anyone else running their skimmer less than 24-7

 

[skimmer315]

my 375 lps i run my home made euro skimmer 3 days a week,rsb and prefilter socks work for me

 

[noahm]

I do about the same. Couple days on, a few off. Works well for my tank which has a few SPS and LPS, tunicates, sponges, sea fans, zoas and a bunch of filter feeders including a very happy basket star. I just don't want to skim all the good stuff, not too worried about the power.