Wet Skim/Tunze 9010

[mskow]

Question: I get a half a collection cup full of a green tingy wet skim a day in my 9010. The cup has a mod that sets it higher to act like a 9015 from the person I purchased it from. Is there a way to make the the skim thicker and not so wet?

Thanks for the help in advance.
Mike

 

[rvitko]

It sounds like, because of the green color, you either have some algae or you feed algae to your fish. Decaying algae will cause watery green skimmate, You can try closing the air adjustment a little, maybe 1/4 turn, but wet skimming removes more waste, you just have to be careful to compensate with sea water for the water removed.

 

[mskow]

Thanks for the response. I misspoke a bit, it is brown with a ting of green - which could be algae from the fuge? The display tank itself has only coraline. I do feed nori to my tangs, could that be the problem?

I get about 250-300ml every night of a wet skim. I do not have though a screw on the side, I guess the person I bought it from took it off? Is there a way I can get a screw from the local home store to substitute, what size is it? I also have the screen for the intake fully open, should this be closed more?

For my water balance - I have an auto top-off that adds RO water, is this acceptable or are further nutrients removed?

Thanks so much in advance, I appreciate it.
Mike

 

[rvitko]

The screw is 8mm. It is our part 9010.360.

The skimming sounds fine it isn't a problem in any way, in fact I would leave it as is. It is just important to note that skimmate is largely salt water and the color and odor relate to what is being skimmed and can tell you a bit about the aquarium, if you remove 250-300ml a day, that should be replaced with 250-300ml a day of diluted saltwater, perhaps 1.018. You could also add a very small amount of salt to your top off, keep it at 1.008 for example. This is why our cup has the ml markings, so you can calculate the amount of salt lost and replenish it.

 

[mskow]

Roger,

Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. Two last questions for you...at least I think Is there a formula to calculate that out? ....also do you know a place to pick-up the part? I called my LFS, they do not have it - did a search at a few places by part number and got no hits.

Thanks again for all of your help, I appreciate it,
Mike

 

[rvitko]

Tunze.com is your best bet.

Usually skimmate is just slightly weaker than straight saltwater, if you wanted to get hardcore about it you would test it with a conductivity meter and then figure out your overall loss rate from evaporation and skimming in 24hrs and add the amount of salt lost to skimming for your full daily top off.