Marine Tank Protein Skimmer

[maccers]

Hello - I am now 8 weeks along the tank maturation cycle. I have a RIO 180 tank, external Eheim 2 Pro filter, heater, UV Lamp, 4 powerheads, and £250 worth of Fiji Live Rock.

I also have a Deltec Protein Skimmer, that for various reasons I cant get on with. Ideally I dont want it - but can I get away without having one?

I intend to keep a fish only tank. I am using RO water from my Deltec RO unit and seem to have a consistent SG of 1.022. I have completed 4 , 10% water changes already.

I guess nothing replaces the function of any protein skimmer, but I was going to use another Eheim external filter, possibily packed with an aggressive filter media?

Any advice would be great,
Cheers,
Richard.

 

[SkiFletch]

What kind of fish? If we're talking small calm critters that dont pollute much, you CAN get by without a skimmer. If you have big messy predators, skimming is nearly required. Without going into the physics behind it, an extra canister filter cannot perform the same function as a protein skimmer. As a matter of fact, no other filtration can really perform its function without being exhorbinantly expensive. If you decide to keep demanding LPS or SPS type corals, a skimmer becomes necessary once again as they do not get on well with protein type pollutants.

 

[mj32]

for my 2cents worth - I ran our tank without a skimmer for 4 weeks thinking I didnt need it.
I added a skimmer a week ago and quite frankly am quite amazed how much crap it pulls out even with 1 tiny clown fish and 1 algae blenny in a 40gal tank.

I would say its worth the hassle of getting it set-up - and I did spend a lot of time playing around with pump outputs and air mixes to get it right

 

[SkiFletch]

heh, yeah lots of tweaking for sure. I'm still adjusting mine as it builds up with crud

 

[mj32]

heh, yeah lots of tweaking for sure. I'm still adjusting mine as it builds up with crud

yeah - I'm still adjusting ours for performance and noise...last night I kinda over-adjusted it and found the crud all over the floor behind the tank

One of these days the wife won't see the funny side of it

 

[andywg]

If keeping larger pred-style fish, you are best off overskimming by at least 2, if not 3 (if the tank is 100 gallons get a skimmer for at least 200, better 300). You can never overskim FOWLR systems.

 

[acesandeights]

Hello - I am now 8 weeks along the tank maturation cycle. I have a RIO 180 tank, external Eheim 2 Pro filter, heater, UV Lamp, 4 powerheads, and £250 worth of Fiji Live Rock.

I also have a Deltec Protein Skimmer, that for various reasons I cant get on with. Ideally I dont want it - but can I get away without having one?

I intend to keep a fish only tank. I am using RO water from my Deltec RO unit and seem to have a consistent SG of 1.022. I have completed 4 , 10% water changes already.

I guess nothing replaces the function of any protein skimmer, but I was going to use another Eheim external filter, possibily packed with an aggressive filter media?

Any advice would be great,
Cheers,
Richard.

I have a deltec MCE 600 great piece of kit and much simpler than most other skimmers to set up and tune not that much tuning is required, theyre so efficient that adding trace elements is a must as trace elements that come with your salt prolly wont compete with the deltec as it strips the water rapidly, with that amount of live rock and a deltec you wont need any mechanical filtration, if you have any queries about the deltec let me know id be happy to help if i can. ps the conditioning agent in salt stops the skimmer from working properly.