The "Necessity" of a protein skimmer

[SneakyOwner]

I have a 125 gal reef that has been running for some time now (5 years) For about that last year I have been running with no protein skimmer (it broke and i just never replaced it). I have 14 fish ranging in size from an 8in blue tang, yellow tang, bicolor angle to clown fish and gobies. I also have well over 40 pieces of coral including sps, lps, leathers, mushrooms, zoas everything. I have two 250w 20000k MH and I feed the corals 3 times a week and the fish get fed twice a day. I have a 10 gallon refugium with chateo in it.
My tank is stable and all the corals are thriving and healthy so it brought up the thought in my mind. Is a skimmer really necessary and could it possibly be taking out things that our corals need to thrive? I do water changes once a month and only add a 2 part supplement, lugols, and dkh for the alkalinity. I've seen people that insist on having the best protein skimmer and they add tons of chemicals but it seems worthless to me. What are you thoughts on this? Are chemicals, supplements, and skimmers necessary?

[BigJay]

thats a whole can of worms your opening there and lots of opinions on it. Especially dependant on the types of corals you keep and how much nutrients are being added to the tank.
Considering your feeding twice a day though I wonder how healthy the tank really is. I've seen tanks on here where people have bragged about not doing this and doing that (like regular tank maitenence) and have super healthy tanks and corals but in the pics of the tank you see cyano covering everything. So thier tests show perfect water when actualilty its a cespool.
ALl that being said I have read some varying schools of thoughts on whats actually being pulled out by the skimmer. Without a lab at hand to analyze the contents all I can say is .. good question wether or not its nescessary or are there other things we could do that would give us a better result.

[BigAl07]

This is a long and endless debate. It sounds like your set-up is working great for you. That's the key is finding a set-up and routine that is stable.

For me... I noticed an immediate improvement when I installed a skimmer. The key difference is I don't supplement at all. I was a while back but that was due to a bad batch of salt mix (supplier replaced free of charge). I test weekly and do weekly water changes.

Do I think it's needed? On most systems YES! I think the skimmer isn't 100% essential once a tank is established and the owner has a good routine but especially for new users I think it improves the chance of long term success. At first we ALL over feed and anytime someone comes over guess what they want to see... FEEDING TIME!!

Kudos to you for running without one but I for one wouldn't do it long term!!

[jenglish]

I believe there are many roads to the same goal, or rather different goals for different setups. Do I believe you could get the same SPS growth in your tank as in some other setups... probably not but I have never tried. I think if you are happy and your critters are happy then things are good. JMHO

[SneakyOwner]

I know its a long debate but since the time the skimmer broke until now I have only noticed my coral health and growth improving. I'm sorry I do not have pictures of my tank with me at school but I would post as I have no growth of cyano or nuisance algae only beautiful pink and purple coraline. My sps corals grow especially well along with other hard corals and soft corals.

[SJS]

I'm wondering the same thing... My skimmer pump quit a few months ago and since I wanted to upgrade to a new skimmer (but cant since the one I want wont fit into the existing sump so now I need a new sump before I buy the skimmer - you get the picture... - no skimmer). I have a 300 gallon DT with a 2-3 inch sand bed and probaby at least 700 pounds of live rock, a 90 gallon fuge with a 5 inch sand bed a 120 pounds or so of live rock, a second fuge - 35 gallons with sand and a sump. Total water volume about 450 gallons. It's been running since January. I am very lightly stocked in the fish department (4 small dwarf angels, lawnmower blenny, bicolor blenny, 5 pj cardinals, 3 chromis 2 clowns and a wrasse - all juveniles and small) and adding more slowly. I change out 50 gallons of water a week and have had almost 0 trates and trites and 0 ammonia. (trates are usually around 3 on my nitrate pinpoint monitor). I also feed the fish around twice daily (they get fed a variety - frozen pellet and flake)the corals spot fed several times a week and the RBTA fed every 3 days. I rarely add anything except vitamin c when changing water - unless the calcium is a little low. I have no algae except coralline (which is everywhere). I use a filter sock for one of the 4 overflows, which I change as needed. My water looks very clear and I run carbon after i use aiptasia x - which is my only problem with the tank (cursed with some aiptasia and 8 peppermint shrimp who dont seem to eat it!) I have colt coral that has grown incredibly quickly and a finger leather that has doubled in size in the last 3 months (it's getting huge) a beautiful sun coral and a tree sponge that seems happy and growing along with other assorted corals. I also have snails that produce lots of baby snails.

So, is it a healthy tank? Everyone seems happy. Is it luck, or lack of lots of fish - I dont know but am willing to leave it alone and continue testing and changing water every week. If I see my trates etc climbing I will add the skimmer back in and see if it actually is needed. Till then, I'm going to try it this way.

Would love to hear from others not using a skimmer and compare notes...

[BigJay]

I have heard of several people running super large systems(ie extremely large fuges) running them as closed systems and doing well. Your super sized fuge with lots of macros to export disolved solids might be more then enough without the skimmer pulling good stuff out of the system. Your large water change routine should serve you well if nothing else but to keep your water balanced more so then exporting any disolved nutrients.
If I had a fuge with a deep sand bed lots of rock and a ton of macros that was somewhat around 30-50% size of my display I'd seriously consider forgoing the skimmer.
Bottom line the nutrients need to go somewhere and as long as your providing an effecient means for that I say your good to go.

[SneakyOwner]

You have alot of live rock and sand. The refugiums definitely help but your tank is still fairly new. When my tank was newer and I ran a skimmer I would get occasional algae blooms and there would be some detritus and such.
My tank has been established for a while but my skimmer has been gone for a year which is a fairly long amount of time. If I ever start to see my sps or other corals start to become unhealthy I will most likely put a skimmer back on the tank.

[BigJay]

btw I've been doing some ridiculous amount of reading recently trying to catch up on studies done during my absence to reefing. If I had the means to have a fuge anywhere near the size of my tank I'd definetly remove the skimmer or only use it occasionally.
I'm even contemplating using a remote fuge and doing manual water exchange. More over I think I am going to start shutting down the sump at lights out to slow down water movement and allow the corals to uptake nutrients at night. So the skimmer would be shut down at night as well. At the very least I am going to experiment with that on nights that I feed. Of course that means monitoring the tank like a hawk and testing every day.

[l3fty999]

Originally Posted by SneakyOwner

You have alot of live rock and sand. The refugiums definitely help but your tank is still fairly new. When my tank was newer and I ran a skimmer I would get occasional algae blooms and there would be some detritus and such.
My tank has been established for a while but my skimmer has been gone for a year which is a fairly long amount of time. If I ever start to see my sps or other corals start to become unhealthy I will most likely put a skimmer back on the tank.

I'm not currently running a skimmer either, but through regular testing I think I can spot a problem before it starts adversely affecting my tank. I do have a working skimmer on standby just in case I need it.

Aaron

[lex]

I have heard of using cryptic zones as a skimmer replacement. all the sponges and seasquirts have the abbility to remove very fine to desolved particulate matter. Also heard of mangroves being able to absorb desolved matter and replace skimmers but not too sure if that was proven or just an individual claiming so.

[BigAl07]

Originally Posted by lex

I have heard of using cryptic zones as a skimmer replacement. all the sponges and seasquirts have the abbility to remove very fine to desolved particulate matter. Also heard of mangroves being able to absorb desolved matter and replace skimmers but not too sure if that was proven or just an individual claiming so.

Both of those require fairly large "mangrove bed" or "cryptic zone" to Display Tank ratio. I have mangroves and as slow as they grow they would take a fairly large # of them before you could see any noticeable effect. I'm not saying they have NO effect but it makes sense they can only be taking up so many nutrients as slow as they grow.

I'm not saying you HAVE to run a skimmer but when you see (and OMG smell) what your skimmer pulls out of your tank I don't see how you could really argue that it's not a good thing.

[Jeremy0322]

The way that I have always looked at it is this. If you have the discipline to run a system that isnt Maxed bio-load wise, keep up on standard tank maintenance (water changes, testing, etc), and dont overfeed then you dont really need one usually, but all systems are different. The skimmer on most tank acts as a sort of safety net. I would suggest that before you go skimmerless you have a good amount of experience under your belt, which, in my eyes, consists of years of keeping saltwater aquariums, giving you the ability to just look at the tank inhabitants and what could be seemingly normal test results, recognize that there is a problem, and then correct it. The skimmer just makes the balancing act much easier alot of the time.

People always tanking about wanting to go as natural as possible, and view the skimmer, since it has a water pump and can be deemed as mechanical filtration, a way of straying away from the natural way of doing things. This couldnt be further from the trust though, if you go to the beach and see all that white foam right on the water line what do you think that is, its the oceans protein skimmer. And although that may seem like a very small amount compared to the size of the ocean you also have to remember there is ALOT of beach on the planet, like...ALOT of it.

Whether you go skimmerless or not is completely dependent on whether or not you feel you are up to the extra challenge that it will bring along with it. They make life easier, keep the tank a little cleaner most of the time, and area great safety net if you overfeed and dont realize it, or just have 1 too many fish in a system. I dont think I will ever run a tank without one, i tried for a while on the 90 and I didnt like what I saw, but that tank was too new to have hit that balance yet where you probably wouldnt need one.

[BigAl07]

Well worded Jeremy

[squiers007]

Jeremy, I agree with what you are saying in principal, but calling the "foam" that is sometimes produced on beaches the oceans skimmer and justifying this with the fact that there are miles of coastline is simply inaccurate. Yes the foam that get produced on beaches is organic material and is created by the same principal our skimmers work on, but the Ocean would not be effected whatsoever if that foaming action never occured.

It is simply a matter of water volume. Because all of the oceans are connected, they can be viewed as one extremely large tank(obviously a simplified model). If you then consider the total biomass in the ocean and compare this to the total water volume of the ocean you will see that this number is dramatically smaller than it is in even the largest of reef tanks. So basically what I am saying is that the "bio-load" of the ocean is very low when compared to a reef tank. Additionally in areas of high organism density, such as coral reefs, the amount of "live rock" is also substantially greater than it would be in a reef tank. There is also much more diversity of life in the ocean than we can keep alive in our tanks which help with nutrients.

Now, am I saying that because our reef tanks have such high bioloads comapred to the ocean that everyone should run a skimmer, No. All I am trying to point out is that we are trying to recreate this enormous ecosystem in our homes and in most cases this requires a helping hand from technology. Ok, thats enough rambling from me. To skim or not to skim, that is the question!