Wet Foam vs. Dry Foam

[mojoreef]

ROFL TG boy the experts sure made that as clear as mud. I think you have to look at skimming as a concept with in the overall filtration of your tank. Here are a couple of examples.
A person with a lower bioload and the desire for more natural food sources, A person with a soft coral tank with not alot of fish, will want more nutrients in the water as the critters in thier tank require more of them. A breeder tank, a seperate clam tank and son on would also fall into this.
Opposite of this would be a tank like mine, because of what i keep I must recreate a very very low nutrient water quality. I use water flow to make the waste and detritus available to have the skimmer remove it. The wetter foam allows for the exportaion of larger particles along with microscopic DOC's.
So folks should just find where they fit between these two opposite ends and adjust thier skimmers accordingly.

hope it helps


Mike

[Scooterman]

Mike you got all that?

[Craig Manoukian]

I agree with Mike. Just as no two tanks are alike, skimming requirements will be different, not one size fits all. Remember that there are skimmerless applications, but as your fish bioload increases so will the level of skimming.

One of the major benefits of running a skimmer is the increased dissolved oxygen in the water column!

[tankgirl]

Thanks, Mike!!! Your advice is Always excellent!!! That's what Jerel said too, that wet foam has more particulate matter in it, but some of the other experts say just the opposite; that dry foam has more particulate matter in it. Makes it hard to figure out.

http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/a...ct/default.asp
"dry foam is richer in particulate matter than wet foam."

[Scooterman]

TG, your right IMO, at least from this point of view! Think about this and see.......Dry skim is thick and per square inch lets say as an example. Per square inch the dry is very concentrated but it goes through lots of water to get the thick stuff. Now on the other hand wet fluid collects quicker and lifts everything into the cup, so per square inch it may have less waste but overall it produces more per volume of water because it doesn't leave anything behind. What I would like to know & this may be a lack of reading on my part but why FW won't work in a skimmer? I'm guessing it has to do with weight and contact time and fractionating the water but I don't know. SO Mike spread the news Fella!
TG, any more Info with conflicting information can lead to a dizzy head, so sometimes you may need to improvise and try a few setting yourself. I say this because of you determination to getting a correct answer. WHich I admire so keep pushing!

[mojoreef]

Scoot i believe you are dead on in your explaination. on the fw No clue here, lol

TG you really have to look at these write up differently, the write up you are refering to is richard being paid to compare products from two manufacturers. This is called endorsements and folks like him do it all the time. Anyway here is how I look at that article, I believe this is the secion you were refering to:

There is no accepted protocol for evaluating protein skimmer performance. In fact, there is disagreement on what a protein skimmer should accomplish. My preliminary work suggests that the volume of foam generated by a protein skimmer may not be a useful indicator of skimmer effectiveness. Furthermore, while hobby conventional wisdom says dry foam is better than wet foam, it appears that dry foam is richer in particulate matter than wet foam.

>There is no accepted protocol for evaluating protein skimmer performance. In fact, there is disagreement on what a protein skimmer should accomplish.= I am winging it here folks, because we all are not sure what is relly going on.
>My preliminary work suggests that the volume of foam generated by a protein skimmer may not be a useful indicator of skimmer effectiveness = From being paid to endorse several skimmer types I have done no testing on the foams concentrations, so I am not sure if more is better or if less is better, Soooo who knows.
>Furthermore, while hobby conventional wisdom says dry foam is better than wet foam = I dont want to upset the good ole boys and get flamed to death.
>it appears that dry foam is richer in particulate matter than wet foam= It appears??? ok from looking in the skimmer cup I think the skimate is thicker when it is dry...I think..or so it would appear...by looking at it....you know????

LOL sorry but thats the way I read the article. The main line in the whole article that is not Iassume, I guess, it would appear is the following

The HSA protein skimmer has once again moved Marine Technical Concepts to the forefront of high-end, high-tech equipment for the reef hobbyist. It is a well-built design with many features that differentiate it from its downdraft competitor. Whether it outperforms its competitors is a question that remains to be answered.

and that is the line that puts the bread on the table.

take care

Mike

[Curtswearing]

I entered this hobby mainly listening to people who worked in a LFS. I later found out a lot of that info was wrong.

I found an internet community with a lot of smart people. I read what they wrote. If I saw a topic that everyone agreed on, I believed it and linked other people to the good info. Some of the things I originally believed, might not be the same anymore.

We truly don't know how much we don't know. We are a lot further along than we were 10 years ago but as you know, the government is giving out any grants for scientists to properly do double-blind tests on the best ways to maintain a reef tank.

It's our job to keep our minds open and think through a lot of the information on the internet.

[Cougra]

Skimmers do work in freshwater however they are extremely inefficient. The reason that they don't work as well in freshwater is because the surface tension of FW is much higher then saltwater. This high surface tension prevents the hydrophobic end of protien from bonding to air. Even adding as little as one tablespoon/gallon of salt to freshwater will reduce the surface tension drastically enough so that you will get some protein bonding done.

[tankgirl]

Hi Scott, re; fw - I just read that! Now if only I could remember it , think it was because sw is denser and so proteins will float to the top of it.

Hi Mike, you're the greatest! That one wasn't the only place, just one off the top of the pile - Then a whole other bunch said dry foam was richer in organic matter! And, to make things even more confusing, I read that many proteins are clear (like egg-white) - so what's the dark stuff in the skimmer?

[Scooterman]

TG you crack me up!
Cougra, I did some testing with FW and yes I saw a little bubbles SG is measurment by weight. the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of some substance (as pure water) taken as a standard when both densities are obtained by weighing in air! which leads me to believe that the dense SW has more time for surface contact with the micro bubbles being generated. Ok don't shoot me on that because I'm thinking outloud here!

[mojoreef]

Its a mix TG, algae, organics at several levels of degradation, doc's and so on. If you have a larger peice of waste, it rises up the foam colum, but its weight forces it back down, sliding from bubble to bubble and never really getting to the collection cup. Going with a wetter foam increases the speed of the foam rising in the tube, this increases the chances of the larger particles making it to the top. In the dry foam concept you do the same but just further down the tube, but by the time it gets to the top it is dry and all the larger particles have dropped back into the water, what we are doing, is allowing what would normally be dry foam to form in the 5 gallon bucket that all the skimmate goes to??? make sence

Mike

[Scooterman]

Yea that is what I was trying to say!

[Witfull]

i have skimmed FW successfully. i had i 10' diy skimmer with dual venturi's driven by 2 iwaki pumps. the reason it was successsful was that it was on a 500g feederfish system. that much slimecoat will foam!

[tankgirl]

Thanks, Scott and Mike!!! It's so nice to get answers to questions like these.

So, what's the dark stuff (if proteins are clear)?

[Scooterman]

It has to do with ORP, our next discussion!