Look who is back! Hi GL! Didja get any of my recent messages???
Sorry Joel, I did get some mail from you. It was like a day or so before I went to Mehico for a couple weeks. I'll try and do some reviewing in the next few days and give you a shout.
Hey GL why do you say with a skimmer in the sump you wont overskim?
I wondered if someone would call me on that after I typed it. I have been doing some researching on nutrient removal lately. Mainly to try and combat my hair algae troubles.
I run across an interesting article on skimming that made a lot of sense. IT explained how a typical skimmer in the sump, that is, running off a pump placed in the sump itself, is inefficient. The author explained how dissolved organics are easily passed through the sump and returned back to the display. Makes sense when you think about it.
He explained the most efficient way to skim is to have the skimmer fed directly with the overflow water from the display, then into the sump. What you do is run your skimmer out of a pre-sump sump,(gosh, the reef habit continues to get confusing doesn't it?), then any overflow from the display goes either into the skimmer, or the sump will accept what the skimmer is unable to process in terms of volume.
IT does make sense when you consider it. The water coming directly from the display will have the most concentrated dissolved organics when expressed as PPM of water. once it enters your sump, the PPM ratio decreases, thereby decreasing your skimmers efficiency. And the way some of us try to have the largest sumps we can, this would further decrease the effectivness of the skimmer.
GL
