Skimmerless: who's doing it? pros and cons

[huckphinn894]

I have a bad habit of writhing on here at work but another thing is:
cons. with running a skimmer you are either running it in your sump before your fuge after your fuge or hanging off the back of your tank. with before your fuge it is taking valuable food away from your fuge and inhibiting pods and plants from growing same with hang on's and if your running it after your fuge your killing/removing pods before they enter your tank as food not to mention the damage impeller pump cause. but very few of use have systems that can use Archimedes screws. if you want to use a skimmer and fuge you need to have an over flow with two bulk heads or a tee valve so you can split the "dirty" water from your display tank sending half to your fuge to feed pods and half to your skimmer to polish. but so much cheaper would be to get some carbon and get rid of any small particles that way.

 

[tmz]

I run a 65 gallon tank without skimming with four fish , lot's of leathers , mushrooms and xenia . I use a canister filter with a little gfo and granualted activated carbon on this aquarium. These particular corals do better growthwise ,ime, in this tank than they do in my mixed reef system which is heavily skimmed and heavily stocked with sps/lps,etc.

 

[Mr.Maska]

ive encountered to many problems with a skimmerless system.

 

[dagon138]

I don't on my Nano..

It's a 10g mixed reef (LPS/SPS/RBTA) tank with the CPR HOB fuge.
Live rock in the fuge and display, some sand in both and a big wad of cheato on a 24x7 light cycle. One fish..a clown, and lots of CUC.

Water is super clear, SPS and LPS grows great and algea issues are fine as long as I don't overfeed.

I do however always do 20% water changes weekly and I vacuum the sand.
Nothing out of the ordinary for a typical nano setup really.

I haven't decided if my Elos 70 will be skimmerless. I plan to go as big as possible on the refigium though, but I'll probably leave a bit of room for a skimmer just-in-case.

 

[BigRick]

I'm going on 3 1/2 months now without a skimmer on my 40 gal acrylic mixed reef with around 25lbs live rock and lots and lots of corals. 2 leopard wrasse, 2 madarins, starry blenny, and clown goby. The only thing in the tank is one powerhead, no filters, skimmers or anything else. I keep it lit with a raised 2 x 250 MH and 4T5's ... way over kill but the only thing i have besides hooking up my AI's packed away for my future build. It's crazy how it's doing so well, no algae growth. The only problem I run into is too much lighting. And i've only done two 25% water changes. The tank has been running on my desk since september. It was setup as a temporary tank until my cube was ready. Which is but haven't had time to mess with it. After pulling the HOB fuge and skimmer off the SPS polyps started to retract so I figured my nitrates and phosphates were going up( I never test, just check salinity). So I pulled them out and set up a 40 breeder for the SPS til I get the cube going. But everything else, LPS, clams, macros and inverts are all happy.

I guess I'm just lucky. One key secret it I feed very lightly and no more then once a day. I just toss a little at a time so the fish consume everything and nothing hits the bottom. I feed 90% NLS Pellets Thera A. maybe once every couple weeks I'll feed a little bit of Rods.

 

[tmz]

Organics and the nutrients from them will likely be higher in a skimerless tank,especially one without granulated activated carbon. Some corals and most nuisance algaes do well with higher organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous to a point; others don't.
Xenia, cataphylia, nemenzophylia,balstomossa,anthelia and discoma are examples of corals that might do well with higher nutrient water. Some corals come from turbid and/ or deeper waters where PO4 and NO3 can be many times higher than the more pristine high reef water where acropora and many other sps thrive.

 

[ColaAddict]

I have Zero algae, other than macroalgae (chaeto). I also have harder to keep animals like clams, RBTA, Wilsoni's. If I tried to skim, I probably will barely skim any, probably nothing, because of the Purigen/Chemipure Elite/Chaeto/weekly water changes in my Nano.

 

[BrokeColoReefer]

the amount of algae and the over all amount of nutrients you have in a system is dependent on how much nutrient export capabilty your system has. Some systems, with enough live rock and macros, can export enough nutrients that a skimmer is not needed. At least, thats the case with my system. However, i have way more invested in live rock then i would have spent on a quality skimmer (over 1000 lbs). I do run a 75 gallon dedicated macro algae fuge.

I dont do anything out of the ordinary with my skimmerless system. I am slow on waterchanges, i feed about every other day, and in general, have the total hands off approach to reef maintence. I have a good food chain system with critters from benifical shrimp, crabs, starfish, snails etc that in my opinion, aid in the reduction of waste in the water. I have found, when left alone, i get the best growth and color even if some parameter is off. My system tends to like stability over perfect parameters..(so maybe there perfect or mabye there off lol) I havent even checked anything other then pH in over a year I do run my system on a controller, calcium reactor, and phosban.

I run a skimmer to add oxygen, but i dont have it set up where the collection cup gathers anything. I feed my fuge from my skimmer water.

 

[Ram Jr]

I had a Miracle Mud system running for over 7 months and it did good but I wanted to do SPS corals. So I had to buy a skimmer. Also want to mention that with using the MM system the system was good till I added more fish and corals. The tank size was 200 gal. I do have a thread with video's from you tube. just search my name.

 

[sneeyatch]

I ran skimmerless for years on different tanks as well as running them. My own personal opinion is that back in the day when skimmers were "must have" pieces of equipment, everyone got it stuck in their heads that a skimmer's advertised rating needed to be doubled. Example - if it was advertised as being adequate for 100 gallons, it was only good for 50. Anyway I think that since technology has improved considerably in skimmer design, that they're actually rated pretty accurately now. I run a SRO1000INT skimmer on my 150 cube which I feed very heavily and I don't have an ounce of problem, and since it's rated right, I feel that the corals are getting appropriate nutrition and show excellent color.

Bottom line IMO is that I think skimmers are a great piece of equipment for various reasons, but most tanks will do just fine without them.

 

[Anthony.Luciano]

my skimmer broke as a was installing my new filter sock and so far my tank is actually doing better with just the filter sock then it did when i only had a skimmer. now of course it will probably be perfect if the skimmer was in there but its definitely good enough for a tank. i have some acans, favias, and a torch in there and they are all healthy.

 

[121]

I don't run a skimmer. My tank is silent and I don't have to clean a skimmer cup.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

My tank is silent and I don't have to clean a skimmer cup. =

Me too, but that's because my skimmer is in the basement and the skimmate goes eventually into a drain.

 

[tmz]

Wish I could run it to a drain but my sewage drains are about 5 feet above the basement floor . Don't think the sump pump would like it and it might stink up the front lawn where the sump discharges ground and rainwater. With all the skimmate produced with carbon dosing, emptying the 2 skimmers is getting to be a chore every two the three days.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, I had the same issue. I collect mine in a closed salt bucket with a sump type pump in it. When it rises to a certain level, it pumps directly into a drain that is on the other side of the basement. If the pump fails for some reason, it would overflow into another salt bucket which has a float switch in it which will shut down the skimmer pump.

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

I have ran many skimmerless tanks over the years. My current new set up is skimmerless as well.

Not sure what or why, but my skimmerless tanks have always been my favorites.

Skimmerless 125 I had running a few years ago,

sump,

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

SOme more pics,

 

[whatcaneyedo]

I find it really interesting that some of you have problems with high pH if you don't use a skimmer. All of my ATO water goes through a kalkwasser reactor as well but if I take my skimmer off line the pH plummets. My system is over 200gal, completely open topped, contains a calcium reactor (this is probably the reason) and 7 fish but I need the skimmer to oxygenate the water. Usually I'm around 7.9 to 8.1 but last night I had to remove the skimmer for cleaning and the pH was down to 7.65 this morning. Within two hours of turning the skimmer back on I'm now up to 7.86

 

[08TRDOFFROAD]

^Could it be due to lack of oxygen in the water? As oxygen levels decrease so does the PH. By adding the skimmer you are oxygenating the water, thus raising the PH.

 

[tmz]

Ph is related to CO2 levels in the water.

If the house air is higher in CO2 than the tank water , turning the skimmer off will reduce aeration and less house air higher in CO2 will enter the water resulting in higher ph.
The opposite is also true. It's usually the tank that is higher in CO2 than the house air and the skimmer helps raise the ph in this situation.
A skimmer will also provide oxygen but it has nothing to do with the ph.