going skimmerless?

[Jeff]

i was reading on rnr and rcabout going skimmerless and some people are having great results. the theory is the skimmers are pulling out too much nutrients out of the tank. i had a sea clone skimmer that was barely working on my 100gl soft tank and i had noproblems with coral growth. about three months agoi won a cpr bac-pac skimmer and replaced the sea clone with it and now i have a problem with my candy cane corals are shrinking. i am going to start running my skimmer only on weekends to see what happens. <_<

[don-n-sa]

If your tank is in good balance I say go for it. When I say balanced I mean that it is not overstocked with fish. Also If you have enough liverock, good flow, a fuge IMO you should not have problems, in fact you should see better growth. Corals use nutrients in the wild just like they do in our tanks, yes they get most of their energy from light, but they use nutients in the water as well.

I would not try this in my system because even with a top of the line skimmer my nitrates are too high. Have you tested for nitrates lately?

I would also make sure you have good surface agitation for gas exchange.

Good luck!

[GaryP]

A few years ago there was some discussion about "part-time" skimming. The basic idea was to put a skimmer on a timer or only skim for a certain period of time between water changes. The main issue I see here is phosphates. High phosphates will inhibit calcification and unless you have the meta phosphate test kit there is no way to get good test results for phosphates. There is a constant input of phosphates into the aquarium in the form of food. Meta phosphates are taken out of the system by skimming. They are pretty "foamy" and are chemically similar to soaps.

[TexasState]

i am going to start running my skimmer only on weekends to see what happens. Disbelief
Looking into my crystal ball, your water is going to yellow out. Eventually, you'll have to squint your eyes hard to see the back of your tank.

[miked78231]

how did people "skim" back in the day, and by that i mean 60-70 years ago.

[hobogato]

they didnt. they didnt have reef tanks!

dont think it will be a problem jeff, my 29 gallon tank at school has been running since august and never had a skimmer. it stays crystal clear, and i have only done 2 - 5 gallon waterchanges since august. it has 10 damsels, an algae blenny, several leather corals and other softies, and a frogspawn that have all been growing steadily. it does have a 20 gallon fuge with helmeda (sp?) and macroalgae that grows really well too.

[miked78231]

they didnt have tanks 50 years ago? so when did the whole tank in the home thing come around?

[hobogato]

im sure someone was keeping salwater tanks, but the hobby has really changed over the past 20 years or so. in the late 80's and 90's, there was almost no-one keeping SPS corals and very few people keeping LPS. I remember having a fresh water tank growing up and none of the fish stores we went to carried salt water fish. the first saltwater reef tank i ever saw was at Tropical Fish Haven in CC, Tx and it was only a display in their office - they didnt even sell marine fish or corals at the time, an that was in the mid 80's.

[dwdenny]

I am sure there were people trying to keep tank that long ago. If you fequent water changes and keep things in check balanced as don-n-sa said then you will be fine. I thought about going skimmerless on my 60g system but I am looking for one now. I still might do it and just run a 20g fuge full of macro and see what happens. But then again this will not be an SPS tank.

[prof]

Balance is the key. If you want to overstock your tank you will have to balance the nutrients with fish waste. Keeping more fish always creates the need for more filtration (skimming) in any system, pond, freshwater, saltwater....

My tanks have always been underskimmed. Part of it is lazyness and part of it is money. I don't keep my skimmers as clean as I should and have not invested in large enough skimmers for my systems. I have always had good luck.

"Dilution is the solution to pollution"

[ratboy]

Ive been skimmer less on my all my tanks for years and have been quite successfull with my fish, LPS and soft corals. I use fuges, DSB, and water changes to control wastes on my tanks but probably keep lower fish loads than most people (2 clowns in a 45, 9 fish in a 400 + searching for more...). BTW caulestrea are one of the "indicator corals" in my tank along with the few SPS I keep (montis and birdsnest). If they start to look bad I start thinking back to when that last water change was....

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c264/eswansiger/DCP_4794.jpg

[don-n-sa]

Wow Ratboy sounds like you are one of the many success stories of people who go skimmerless. I definitley think it is due to your light fish load. I have more fish in my 240g than you have in your 400g. I love my fish though, I just have to work a little harder to keep nitrates in check.

[dwdenny]

makes you want to take a chance. I am going to start out skimmerles but if things get a little out of control I am going to look into a good skimmer for about 3X my current system size.

[lhoy]

I have been planning to do a 55 gallon SPS with LPS and a 75 Gallon softie and LPS with no skimmers to see what happens. I have a 9 gallon tank chock full of LSP and zooanthids and a leaf fish and purple lobster. Only maintenance is weekly water changes (like faithfully and never miss) and only filter is a sponge also cleaned weekly and everything is growing like crazy. In fact my torch is divinding and my frogspawn is about to take over. My green Sinularia has grown so big I'm afraid it will need fragging soon!! Got it as a small frag at Fin Addict.

I think we tend to keep things to "clean" just like in keeping venomous snakes we tend to overfeed. I only feed every 3 to 4 weeks my snakes and in the wild they might feed 6 to 10 times a year at best. Many feed their snakes weekly.

Alas, I'm off topic but trying to point out I think all these additives we dose, pump, pour, drip, etc. is exactly what we are taking out with other forms of filtration. I suspect the next big wave of reefkeeping may be very natural with little filtration besides biological such as live rock.

Will be fun to watch (and hopefully) a lot cheaper for the hobbyist. Who wouldn't rather spend $300 on livestock instead of a skimmer? Good night, you guys post some amazing frags for sale and I am behind on getting the 55 and 75 ready to go.

Lee

[TexasState]

They have reef tank back then. Some book have picture of these type of 60's era tank. The guy just go down to the beach and do a water change. Natural light is used for lightning. A few people have been keeping reef since the 1800's. Aitpasia is a cool thing to have back then.

[loans_n_fishes]

I started out skimmerless for the first 3 months. ( 75 gallon tank...I only had one clown pair that I added after 2 months). It really boosted my pod population! I was able to add a mandarin (that is still fat) after only 3 months!

I am now running a skimmer, but hope to eventually use a fuge with algae/mangroves instead. I also have around 135lbs of live rock and around 90 pounds of live, special grade reef sand (aragonite) on a plenum to help with filtration.

[GaryP]

If you look at the recommended stocking levels in some of the old fish books you will see how they ran without skimmers. As I recall it was something around one inch of fish per 7 gal. of tank size. That means you could have about 3-4 tang sized fish in 125 gal. tank.

[dwdenny]

http://www.reefs.org/library/members/e_borneman_120898.html here is a good read on skimmerless tank setup. I liked I thought maybe soemone else would too. It is a little old but still valid I think.

[Bill S]

See if I can shed some light. I've been in the hobby for over 35 years - the first 8 in a very large LFS. At the time, we were the 2nd largest store in the US. We started carrying saltwater in around 1970. They were staggeringly expensive (about the same price as fish today - but in 1970 dollars when gas was 29.9 a gallon). Skimmers came in the early '70s. Wood birch blocks in a tiny - by today's standards - skimmer. Like a 2" tube. That was it. We used undergravel filters, and a HOB filter for mechanical filtration. Carbon was BRAND new. Big water changes were typical. Except for fish NOTHING lived for more than a few weeks. Coral? That was the bleached stuff we put in for decoration.

[dwdenny]

Yeah I think in todays world it can be done but still needs to be done carfully and well planned. We know more about corals and fish them we did in the 70's. I am still planning to do 20% water changes until I feel that I might be able to do a lower water change. I also plan to have 15g fuge connected to the system.

[fishypets]

Good luck to the all of you going skimmerless. I have seen a few tanks with sps and no skimmer, needless to say they were not very impressive. If I had a tank full of zoos and softies I might consider it also but if you are keeping sps a skimmer is a must IMO.

[Richard]

I think tanks can do just fine without a skimmer. Especially mature systems that have been maintained properly.

The thing that is going to make it give very different results for different tanks is that it depends so much on an persons stocking & maintenance & feeding habits. Even more variable will be each systems ability to export/utilize excess nutrients. This will vary depending on things like how functional the sandbed is (mainly infauna variation), type/porosity/ amount of liverock, types of corals, how established the bacterial populations are and types of established bacteria, probably many other things too.

Going skimmerless isn't something I would recommend to the general public because of those different factors but I think many people can get the same or even better results without a skimmer. I think the safe way to do it would be to wean your system off of the skimmer so that it gives your system time to adjust to the higher availability of nutrients.

[loans_n_fishes]

When weaning, do you mean turn off the skimmer for a couple of hours at a time and slowly increase the time it is off?

I am not going to do this yet, but would eventually prefer to filter naturally (with a refugium/live rock etc).

[Richard]

I would turn it off for a day then on for a day. Then off for 2 days on for a day....

By off I mean not skimming but you still need to keep the water flowing through it. Otherwise the water will stagnate and give you big trouble when you turn it back on.

[hobogato]

looks like im joining the skimmerless kick on my frag tank, my berlin skimmer got some carbon pellets in it and after taking it out and cleaning, it is leaking badly, so i may just run that system (on the hiatt method) without a skimmer. the skimmer has been running a "wet" as i could set it for a month now and not produced enough skimmate to cover the bottom of a 1 gallon juice bottle.

[Richard]

Ace - That is a totally different situation though. As long as you meet the four requirements of the Hiatt method you just don't need a skimmer. Actually it should work better without a skimmer since you get a better population of the RN bacteria by not having a skimmer competing with them. Although as you saw they are pretty good about outcompeting the skimmer.

Mark actually had to add organics to get his system working better. He used water from his cichlid tank (N ~100) as top off water LOL. His tank was too clean when he switched over to the torpedos so he had to add more N to get his P down to undetectable. The RN bacteria reduce N & P at a 4:1 ratio.

[brewercm]

From some of the things that I had read about going skimerless one was frequent water changes, and a decent fuge. Just my thoughts, but I run my skimmer very dry so I would suppose in a way it's somewhat the same theory just not to the extreme of total skimmerless. Although my fuge grows macro like nuts (cheato, and razor caulerpa).

[GaryP]

I was just wondering one thing. If going skimmerless was such a good thing, why did everyone go to using a skimmer in the first place when they were first introduced into the hobby?

Forgive my skepticism but this sort of reminds me of trading in a Ferrari for a Model T. Based on the posts here I would have to say that not many people have a problem with too little organics in their system. Quite the opposite. I can see how going skimmerless may have its niche in something like a frag tank with very low nutrients.

One of the other common problems I see here is people starving their fish in order to keep nutrients under control. I'm afraid this will only add to this mentality.

OK, someone made the comment that they would rather spend $200 on livestock then a skimmer. I'll just ask one question. How many buckets of extra salt at $40/ea. would you have to buy, to keep up with the additional water changes, would it take to pay for that skimmer? Just looking at the economics alone makes me think its a pay me now, pay me later situation.

One other issue to consider. Having a skimmer gives you a certain safety factor that going skimmerless doesn't provide. What happens when you have a fish die in your tank that you can't retreive? How is the skimmerless system going to handle that additional organic load? Is losing a prize SPS colony worth saving a few bucks?

I will be the first to admit that a skimmer does have some down sides. A lot of desirable nutrients do get removed with the skimmate. Iodine is one of these. Another factor to consider is that a lot of the gas exchange that occurs in a tank take places in the skimmer. My guess is that a skimmerless system is going to have a higher likelihood of having pH problems as a result.