Tropical Fish Forums

[unissuh]

Been doing some reading on protein skimming and a couple of questions have come up:

1) Has anyone ever experienced/seen a conclusive case of overskimming? I realize that a skimmer can also pull trace elements out of the water along with proteinaceous waste (asked about this previously), but is does this happen in significant enough amounts?

2) Assuming overskimming is real, what sort of oversize on the skimmer are we talking about to overskim? 50gal rated skimmer on a 10gal? 100gal rated skimmer on a 10gal? Just a rough estimate would do, I realize that it is very dependent on stocking levels etc.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[SLACkra]

I use a prism skimmer(which I do not advise anybody to ever purchas) which acording to the box is rated for 400L on a 24L tank. so your going to have to make sure its rating is acurate and it is a decent skimmer.

your in melbourne so I highly recomend you join www.masa.asn.au's forum reefing the australian way and maybe come along to a MASOV(marine aquarium society of victoria) meeting, the next one is on the 13ths of august in rosebud(long drive the the hosts tank is 18ft long )

heres a link to a topic on overskimming on rtaw
http://www.masa.asn.au/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=157284&highlight=overskimming

hope this helps you with your fish keeping,

Andrew

[unissuh]

Have joined and been reading that forum for months.

Couldn't find any conclusive cases of a skimmer actually pulling out elements out of the water column so I thought I'd check to see whether it happened to anyone on here.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[sirreal63]

I had my recirculating G3 which is rated for a 250 gallon tank (before the recirculating mod is done) on my 58 and the sps corals grew better than ever. I am sure it is possible to overskim but not something we can easily do. I wouldn;t worry about it. Water changes replace trace elements.
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Out on the road today...I saw a DeadHead sticker on a Cadillac...
Jack
110 Gallon DSA Pentagon

[FloridaBoy]

I think you will more likely find many cases of UNDER-skimming! Yes, many of these gizmos are actually doing a terrible job, innefficient and sorry excuses of products which fail to produce daily skimmate... their owners THINK they are skimming but are not really at all. Choose your skimmer carefully, there are good ones available, the search tool will help you.
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Keepin' marines happy for 25 years

[bukitimah]

I intend to use Weipro WH-4000 pump & SA-2012 hang-on protein
skimmer for a 2 ft tank, any advise?