Water change from the skimmer.

[saveafish]

Just woundering if someone has done a water change using their skimmer to pull the water out of the system. after I get some imput on this I might try it. In thoughts even the runny skimmate would have some polutants. In wich would be more consentrated than just pulling it out of the tank.

Have I gone mad?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It is a great way to do small frequent water changes, say 1% daily. It would not be especially useful to use it to pull out many gallons in an hour or less as there won't be much improvement in skimming action over normal use, IMO.

 

[Norberg]

I used to have a 250g SPS tank with about 60 fish in it, lots of Anthias, Cirrhilabrus and large angels. So i was doing some heavy feeding that was needed to be handeled in some way.

I have a oversized skimmer that is very sensitiv to changes in the waterlevel in the sump and that i tok advantage of. I have put a hose on the drain with a valve, and when i did waterchanges i just put the hose in a bucket (like reef crystal bucket) and opened the valve. Then i tok a bucket of the same size fild with new water and started to ad about 1gallon at the time until the new water was finnished and the skimmat bucket was full!
And i used to change 5-7 % per week.

I liked it and it worked great for me.

 

[saveafish]

OK. This sounds like a, Have to try. It will be done tomarrow so I will leave my resaults on here.

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Randy, is is possible that using wet skimming to do your water changes could result in the accumulation of a particular substance? I'm wondering whether certain substances are less likely to appear in wet skimmate than they are in the regular system water; that something in the skimming process biases for certain substances to be left behind.

 

[LockeOak]

I would think that proteins with a higher proportion of hydrophobic residues would be the first to be removed via skimming and those with more hydrophilic residues would take longer, but I don't see why that would cause any nutrient imbalances. I'm a biology grad student though, not chemistry, so I'll defer to Randy

 

[saveafish]

OKKK. Well the water change has been done. I did a 10gal change on a 110 w/40gal sump. This took about 2 1/2 hrs. all the water that was wast water was a murky greenbrown water. Using the skimmer. To compare I took a gallon the way I usally do and the color was almost clear. I also tested the 2 with some simple test. First skimmer pulled. (1) SG, was 1.010 so less salt was to go to waste there. (2) Amonia, 0.4 wow I thought. (3) Nitrite .4/4 The second batch was my normal water chang test. (1) SG, 1.025 (2)Amonia 0 (3) nitrite 0. The test I used was cheap Aquarium System powder test w/ a refract for SG, In a short thought I will be doing the water chang like this for 2 full months to see the tottle resaults. As of now I am very happy with this. This would be a very easy water chang for all skimmers that have a gate valve. Thus even easier for the ones that have High Speed airation skimmers, Like Becketts, Downdrafts and Spray Injections.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Some substances are easier to skim out than others. All of these are organics, and I don't think wet vs dry or mucho vs less skimming would create any particular problematic imbalances for that reason alone.