Pjanssen Posted August 10, 2021 Share Posted August 10, 2021 Is there an advantage to one over the other? Seems like the newer models are are more hour glass shaped. Does that make them better, aka new and improved? Quote Link to comment
mcarroll Posted October 9, 2021 Share Posted October 9, 2021 On 8/10/2021 at 5:51 PM, Pjanssen said: Is there an advantage to one over the other? Seems like the newer models are are more hour glass shaped. Does that make them better, aka new and improved? It usually only makes them more expensive. Otherwise, no significant difference IMO. 1 Quote Link to comment
DevilDuck Posted October 9, 2021 Share Posted October 9, 2021 I somewhat regret buying a skimmer, especially when I didn’t have a excess nutrient issue. I believe running it contributed to my phosphate bottoming out causing a dino bloom. Make sure you really need one before spending the money. 1 Quote Link to comment
mcarroll Posted October 10, 2021 Share Posted October 10, 2021 9 hours ago, DevilDuck said: I somewhat regret buying a skimmer, especially when I didn’t have a excess nutrient issue. I believe running it contributed to my phosphate bottoming out causing a dino bloom. Make sure you really need one before spending the money. Don't take this as saying skimmers are a necessity (they're not, but I think in most systems they do help), but I think your theory is unlikely given what we know about skimmate and what we know about phosphate in reef tanks. At no point in the hobby were skimmers ever able to lower anyone's high nitrates or high phosphates....back when that was the problem. 😉 (Still is my situation.) Lowering nutrient levels always took water changes, or eventually GFO when that came into vogue. Same still applies today...I can skim my 2-3-cubes-a-day tank 24/7/365, but PO4 levels remain >2.x ppm. When folks at the old AdvancedAquarist website analyzed skimmate and skimmer performance many years ago, nothing they found would indicate a protein skimmer's ability to drive nutrient levels down significantly...certainly not to a dangerously low level. Removal through skimming depends on high nutrient gradients...once nutrient levels get down to a certain level, there's no longer enough to generate stable bubbles...so skimming naturally slows or stops. The process seems to top out at around 30-40% efficiency. A skimmer might slow the rise of nutrient levels, but not more than that. But wait, there's more! To the extent that *any* phosphate is removed by skimming (eg. non-dissolved sources) you can see the breakdown of what and how much in the refresher article the same author wrote a little more recently here: https://reefs.com/magazine/elemental-analysis-of-skimmate-what-does-a-protein-skimmer-actually-remove-from-aquarium-water/. (There are citations for the older articles if you wanna look at them too.) That article might be TL;DR so here's my nutshell summary.... Even when you get really really technical and account for every atom of P in skimmate regardless of source, the amount of phosphate removed from the system in skimmate is positively dwarfed by the amount of phosphate coming into the system via feeding. Skimming does have "some impact" on phosphate. "Some" is pretty close to "zero" in this case tho. Whatever the case was, hopefully that article will shed some light on what happened! 🙂 2 1 Quote Link to comment
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