Wet Skimmate Water Changes?

Gary Majchrzak said:
my skimmer cup has a drain.

the drain line leads to a waste sink.

once every week

fwiw I feed very heavy
JuniorsReefMay2011.jpg
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I LOVE YOUR TANK and its inhabitants
 
I just got a Reef Dynamics XRC 180 skimmer. I am running it out of the sump for now until I figure out a way to fit it in my sump. If anyone is familiar with this skimmer, how would I safely do a water change using the wet skimmage technique on a out of sump skimmer setup? Or is it the same. I would probably need to change about 15 gallons per week to keep up with my normal schedule.
 
had a go at doing this last night after reading this thread.

Couple of observations: I think the ideal would be to run the skimmer fairly slowly - mine emptied out a couple of gallons in about 5 minutes, should really have slowed it down a bit to get more skimmer contact time.
It didnt really seem to do my skimmer much good. it took a while to "bed in" anyways, and stop producing microbubbles; after doing this, the inside of the skimmer cone had been flushed too clean and I had to turn the flow up way beyond where I had it beforehand. suspect when i get home later the cup will have overflowed.

Think if you have a sensitive skimmer thats tricky to dial in (like mine) this method causes a lot of trouble.

I am running biopearls; the alternative for me I guess is to divert the outlet of the reactor the pearls are in and use that for a water change. probably the same sort of effect.
 
I know that I don't have an "advanced" set up, but since reading this, I turned the airstone up significantly on my Biocube skimmer, installed a drain line leading to a gallon jug, and have been collecting a lot of brown/ugly water that I then replace with newly mixed Salt Water. It is much easier than making, draining, and replacing what seems to be mostly clean water each week. It basically creates a small daily water change and the water I pull out is gross, not clear and nice! It saves me time, money, and my ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are now at 0. Before this method, my nitrate was in the 10-20 PPM range when tested.

I do not turn my skimmer down to make dry skimmate (this cheap skimmer never really made "dry" skimmate anyway), I run it nice and wet 24/7 and seems to work great for me.

Until I run into problems, I will continue to use this method instead of the classic 10-15% weekly water change.

Thank you to whoever came up with this method!!!
 
I skim wet, but the downside is ... you have to constantly check salinity, calcium,mag and DKH . I now add a mix 50/50 of sea water and rodi water to my ato container. It demands adjustment from time to time. I do check salinity almost daily though !! It works and I still do regular water changes weekly.
 
I think it depends on what sort of water changes you do. Gradual and constant water changes, like you get with 24/7 wet skimming or big chunk water changes like you get by skimming wet for just a little while... I don't really do scheduled water changes, but my skimmer has always run wet, so i also have to keep topping off with some salt water. Effectively i do small water changes every day...

I'll be sure to remember this all though for my next tank, i'll even incorporate a new salt water tank to my ATO then. When i want to change water i'll skim wet and change the ATO source from fresh to mix, then just remember to go back to fresh when the skimmer is dialed back in. Who needs a fancy water change machine when you got this?
 
my system is setup as follows:

as skimmate is removed it is replaced with fresh seawater via ATO

evaporative loss is estimated and replaced throughout the day by RO/DI water via reservoir/pump controlled by Apex, which needs adjustment from time to time depending on the season
 
Gary Majchrzak said:
IME (much!) wet skimming actually SIMPLIFIES removing water from an aquarium for a water change.

I crank the waste gate on my skimmer closed 1/4 turn and (voila!) 4 hours later 50 gallons of wet skimmate water has been removed from my system.
Pump in 50 gallons of new water. Done.

Very simple.
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I have to agree with Gary.

I wet skim 24/7 and perform a WC every 24hrs with 1-2% or total system volume. When your only changeing ~2gal, it's real easy to accomodate the usual 0.5-0.75gal that was wet skimmed plus the remaining portion to total 2 gal. After you have the skimmer set, if you perform a daily/bi-daily WC it can't be easier. No changing of gate valve setting and a 'clean' skimmer neck everyday.

If you dilute my concentrated skimmer waste with a comparative amount of water, it looks no differernt from the wet skimmate.

Then again, I guess by now this is only....:deadhorse1:
 
Found this topic while researching Lanthanum chloride for phosphate removal... I've employed this method for some time although more so in recent weeks in an attempt to get my algae under control.

I am working on a 10 gallon water change right now... The output is colored like green tea.

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Been a while since I've visited this thread. I am very curious to know if the Skimmate removed via foam fractionation removes more undesirable DOM's, etc from our reefs than via syphoning water directly from your reef.. Could it remove elements we desire? When I initially wrote this thread that is what I was inquiring about.. Any thoughts?
 
I'm not clear what you are asking, but if the question is whether wet skimming removes more organic matter than does siphoned water alone, then the answer is certainly yes unless you are sucking up piles of detritus and algae.

The more debatable point is whether a skimmer running dryer plus siphoned water changes is better or worse than wet skimming taking out the same amount of water.

My contention is that if wet skimmate is made simply by allowing less draining of the same skimmed water, then it cannot have less organic matter and probably has more. If wet skimmate is made relative to dry skimmate by other means than less drainage, then the answer is not clear. There is no measured data on these issues.

There is data on what is removed by skimming. Whether you think it may be removing something you want in the water depends on what you think you want removed and what you want to remain. Skimming does not select out soluble calcium, alkalinity, or magnesium for removal. :)
 
I dont agree with this method. Its not going to hurt anything, but test your water. If your filtration (bio/mechanical) are good then you will never have to experiment with this. If every test I do reads "good" then why would I mess with this? Most beautiful tanks were not made by super wet skimming.
 
greengeco82 said:
I dont agree with this method. Its not going to hurt anything, but test your water. If your filtration (bio/mechanical) are good then you will never have to experiment with this. If every test I do reads "good" then why would I mess with this? Most beautiful tanks were not made by super wet skimming.
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Since skimming removes organic matter primarily, do you test for that?

Copper will be mostly bound to organics which can be removed by skimming. Do you test for that?
 
Its quite simple, If you have clean, broken in (Running long enough to produce skimmate) skimmer and compare it to the organic matter that is in your cup after one hour, and dry out the wet skimate you will roughly see that same amount of organics removed. but that's only part of the issue. Once a skimmer has been producing dry skimmate for over a week you will see a direct drop off of skimmate due to bubbles breaking on the way out of the skimmer,(this is due to inefficient bubble rise) Hence the organic build on the skimmer walls, to rectify this one would encompass a wet neck skimmer, to keep it clean, but it doses nothing for efficiency, the bubbles are still breaking. Not the third part of the issue, the type of skimmate and what it contains. this is where the is great diversity. The normal skimmer is only 12% efficient some are as low as 3% and the best under tank units scored 18%. Now Dont take these numbers and times them by the % they are lacking. As a bubble rises it needs to be in a state of uncontacted medium with other bubbles, not continually mixed and striped of there organics. it takes about 20 seconds for a bubble to become completely absorbent and unbreakable shell, it is at this stage organics rapidly are attracted to the bubble, the longer the bubble is in contact with the water, the more organics are removed, again this is amount of times the percent , the bubble starts to attract heavy metals in their last stages of full development, slowing the bubble further and collecting inorganic compounds.

So what does this have to do with wet vs dry skimmate? first it keeps your skimmer cleaner, which allows more organics removed, since I know only a few people clean there entire skimmer once a week, wet skimming is more beneficial they dry skimming. Adding of FSW over a longer period of time is better than dumping in 10-20% all at once.

Now if the skimmer is above 30 feet tall, then you would have ideal bubble rise and then you can see the difference of metals removed in the skimmate, a large amount research papers are done on this subject due to this is how your local sewer treatment plant works.
 
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