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Bob, if you've never had one then how can you possibly decide if they are "grossly overated" Have you seen skimmate?

It would of course be an exercise in futility to engage in an argument. I have stated an opinion, and that is as far as I will go. I have run a very successful reef tank for the last five years without resorting to a skimmer except a brief unsatisfying experience with one, and my decision is to leave the gadget to those who believe there is need for one.:biggrin:

Yes, it is possible to run a successfull reef without a skimmer, nobody will argue that.

But could that same reef be run easier, and possibly even healthier, with a skimmer?

Bob, what skimmer did you try, on what size tank? What made the experience unsatisfying?

I'm with boB on this one.

A few years ago, we ran a Precision Marine HOT skimmer on our first two reefs for about 2-3 years. Produced great skimmate! But fiddling with it to remove micro bubbles, fiddling to get the skimmate not too wet or too dry, and coming home to at least two floods was just too much freaking work! Now that we live in a second storey condo, floods are a major no-no :razz:

I know we do exta work to compensate for the lack of skimmers on our three reefs, but we don't have any more floods and don't have to fiddle with extra machinery. IMO, our reefs look great.

Rory and countless others have seen our skimmerless reefs. Anyone care to comment on how our reefs are doing without skimmers?

I think you can run a tank just fine without a skimmer. However once you get into the bigger tanks a skimmer is almost a necessity, due to the amount of time and money required to due major upkeep all the time. My total system volume nears 250 gallons and I would not like changing 10-20% of this every week. If I was retired and didn't have much on the go, well I could manage that, but I'm not. I perfer doing less waterchanges and pulling oodles of junk out with my skimmer. I also think that the balance in my tank is better due to the fact that I'm always pulling out waste that is theoretically introduced as food everyday. It dosen't accumulate until my next water change.

Bev gets away with not skimming, but she's also on a very strict maintenance schedule that some people would have a hard time adhereing to.

If that same reef is my reef, the answer is emphatically NO

It must be remembered that I have been keeping salt water tanks off and on since the middle seventies. I have probably tried every gadget that was foisted upon the unwary hobbyist. And my findings are that the skimmer is just an overrated gadget.

Fuge and 10-15% weekly water changes on the tank without the skimmer....wait a minute ... same routine for the tank with the skimmer.

Bob, I cannot possibly "remember" that you have been keeping SW tanks since the 70's, I wasn't even born! :)

What size tank(s) are you currently running skimmerless? Any more details on your tanks? Cleaning regiment, fuge, etc?

One thing to keep in mind is what "reef" means to you. I keep primarily SPS, and feel that a skimmer is essential. If I instead kept a tank with zoos and/or softies only, I would have to seriously consider not using a skimmer. I have seen tanks of this type that appear to do better with higher nutrient levels.
We certainly can't argue with Bob about skimmers, he's been not using one for ever and his tanks all do just fine. I use a skimmer and my tank does just fine. So who's right? Both of us. Or neither, depending on how you look at it.

To address the topic, if skimmers didn't exist, I'd use ozone, GAC and water changes. And I'd invent skimmers and get rich!!

The problem with ozone is that the best way to run it is with a skimmer. From what I've read those ozone reactors aren't all that great.