Featured Aquarium-March issue

[Robert Jordan]

To Jason Cothren & All,
Jason, I have heard from others who are members of this forum when they visited Compuserves fish forum about not using skimmers; but not to make water changes seems to be not in line with the maintanence of water quality. Do you attribute your success with outstanding tap water of very high quality? Bob Jordan

 

[coralite1]

Robert,
jason mentioned that his skimmer is still running, just because it is intended for aeration doesnt mean that some selective skimming isnt goin on along the skimmer walls.
Jason
Have you noticed this kind of buildup? I would like to know how adjusted your skimmer is, what model and how many fish you have in your tank. What benefits have you observed in response to your skimmer not being "worked".

 

[jamesw]

Hi Gang,

I'll have to pass these questions on to Jason. He used to hang out in the #reefs chatroom, but I don't think he visits thisi discussion board any more. I'll pass these questions along and hopefully he will drop by.

For what it's worth, there are lots of people here in Houston in our local marine aquarium society that do not use skimmers. Eric Borneman and Sue Truett are two that I can think of, but there are many more.

Perhaps others will chime in here with their experiences with or without skimmers. I ran my tank skimmerless for about 1 year, but I went back to using the skimmer. FWIW, I saw no difference between the two, but decided to keep using the skimmer, since I had it.

Cheers
James Wiseman

 

[AF Founder]

IMO, the real issue is whether you can achieve a balance between the producers (fish for example)of waste and exporters of waste. If you have a lot of well fed fish it is hard to export enough of their waste to keep it from building up to toxic levels without a skimmer or powerful macro-algae filter. In a certain sense a skimmer is a micro-algae filter. Most of what most skimmers export (skimmate) is composed of micro-algae, whch have consumed much of the same waste as macro-algae.

Terry Siegel
Editor, Advanced Aquarist

 

[Robert Jordan]

Coralite,
I would be interested in the numbers on a comprehensive water report from his local uility. Bob