killer skimmer

[jc]

I have my protein skimmer hanging off of my refugium. The skimmer is a cpr bak pak with a rio. I would like to try to keep a mandarin down the road. I know that the refuge is a good place to grow pods, but will the protein skimmer kill them?

[dwdenny]

yes it will. If you have a seperate sump that is were I would put the skimmer. JMO though

[jc]

I don't actually. I hate to put the skimmer back on the tank because of the noise. I may have to skip the mandarin. bummer.

[dwdenny]

well you could put in a baffle to seperate the fruge from the skimmer and use a differnt return pump. They tend not to kill the pods as much I hear.

[brewercm]

If you have enough in your fuge you should be fine also. I have my poor pods having to be pumped back up into my tank through my return without a problem. They are pretty hardy little guys and seem to make it through the pump pretty good.

[dwdenny]

They wont make it through the skimmer will they brewercm?

[JimD]

Since most pods are rock dwelling creatures and not free swimmers, I doubt many will make it to the skimmer pump.

[Thunderkat]

I have one of those dual bak paks and I see pods running around in there all the time. The inside got covered with coralline, sponges, and pod colonies. I finally had to clean it all out when aiptasia moved in too.

[dwdenny]

you've had all sorts of things happen Thunderkat. How is the new tank going?

[brewercm]

I get very few pods into my skimmer and my fuge returns the water directly back into the sump where the skimmer is, basically a big loop.

I love watching all the pods and stuff that get into my overflow section.

[jc]

Do mandarins prefer copepods or amphipods. I can see how amphipods wouldn't get sucked into the protein skimmer since they seem to move around like insects.

[mathias]

I have a mandarin for last year and he is fat. The whole time I have had a skimmer...

[dwdenny]

But in the fuge mathias?