Over Skimming

[AquariumGeek]

Is It Possiable To Over Skimm A Reef Tank??

 

[2poor2reef]

Depends what you mean by overskimming. Is it possible to get the water column too clean of dissolved organics. Not in my opinion. Is it possible to skim out plankton and other disirable substances from the water column. Probably.

 

[randy holmes-farley]

To some extent this answer may depend on what you are keeping in the tank. Some corals may benefit from unnaturally high organics, and residual inorganics if they also rise, and some might be hurt by them. Hobbyists evidence suggests this to be the case.

The case of plankton is more complicated, IMO. I've seen no studies that showed whether there is much living plankton in typical reef tanks, and whether such plankton is removed by skimming. Moreover, once you start skimming, even very gently, you might deplete plankton, and even more extensive skimming might do little or nothing to the near zero plankton levels.

 

[2poor2reef]

That's an interesting point about plankton. Again, it depends what you mean. I would be surprised if there wasn't a fairly regular supply of bacterioplankton in our tanks and I have understood that these are food for some coral species. Likewise I feed DT's live phytoplankton which I certainly don't want to see skimmed out. I also feed the smallest sized golden pearls which are not plankton but could be though of as plankton replacement and may be skimmed out also. Beyond that, even if my occasional peppermint shrimp and bristle worm spawns aren't regularly occuring I still don't want to lose that food source to a skimmer when it does occur. That's why I have a refugium on my fishless sps tank. Nonetheless I skim.