How's your skimmate?
 

Just out of curiosity; how is your skimmer set?: wet or dry.
I like to skim a little on the wet side. Advantageous? I don't know. I've heard arguments for both sides.

I've noticed a few corals the last week or so look a little less 'polypy' and some algae creep in. This was running the npx beads too. So I've cranked the air on my crap Tunze 9002 and I have about 1" of skimmate just today. So very wet but that's how I'll be doing it going forward. This skimmer just cannot skim dark. Only downside is the thing is noisier now but hey...corals first and the family's comfort second right?

On my Euroreef I used to get the thickest nastiest grudge but with my Hydor I just get LOTS of wet skimmate (My 2L bottle fills fast). Its dark enough that you cant see through and smells pretty nasty.

Dry for now, I fluctuate the level of my sump via waterchanges and overdid it a few weeks ago with some "extra" water (miscalculation), the damn skimmer cup was filling in 3 days. I'm just not motivated to clean it that often so I have the sump level lower and its pretty thick.

On the 90 gal. I have the BM set fairly wet; skimmate is the colour of tea with a greenish tinge. I have to empty the cup more often but it keeps the neck cleaner longer.
On the 225 gal. I have the Beckett skimmer set even wetter. Colour is more green and the smell is not as strong.
The two tanks have quite different bio-loads though. The 90 has more SPS and smaller fishes, whereas the 225 has more softies and LPS with more large fishes.

Mine is almost black and fairly thick but I still have to clean it out everyday if possible, 2 days max. Nasty stuff.

Christy, don't you find though that when you skim dryer you have to clean the neck more often. All depends on which you dislike more I guess. I don't mind emptying and cleaning the cup but I hate cleaning the neck.

I skim fairly wet...for the same reason Lance....I dislike cleaning out sludge. I get about 4 cups of skimmate a day when I have it set where I like it...



..... but my "Otto" top off is lazy and the skimmate isn't always as wet as I'd like :razz:

I also have a euroreef skimmer and just like zoaElite said it's very dark skim with nasty sludge in the neck.

Yeah, I get about 3-4 cups a day on the Beckett, but I have a large waste collector so I only have to empty it every 4th day.
Hey, it's summer, "Otto" can slack off a bit. :biggrin:

I think Lance skims wet so that he has a larger volume of Facial Nog that he can sell. Kinda like waterin' down his Booze :twised:

Don't tell my customers that! :wink: They're very happy with my cheaper prices.

Exact same for me, about a cup full every 4 days and its really really thick and stinky. (euroreef as well)

mine is fairly dark and wet in my vertex IN100 and i clean it out once a week at about a third full

my aqua medic skims very dark and nasty stuff so dry my ETSS is not as dark or half as nasty but I empty the cup once a week on both. I like the Aqua Medic better I don't get any algae in the tank when I use it but with the ETSS I get some HA growth on one rock and no where else, kind of weird I'd say.

Bill

Skim dry on the 210g Reef & wet on the 120g fowlr. I always scrub down the neck when I empty the collection cup anyways (usually every 4 days or so). Skimming dry is very stinky, especially since I added the NPX pellets to the reef tank. So nasty smelling I have to clean the cup before its full.

I own a Red Sea Prizm. Consequently, I get no skimmate.

Well with my remora my only option is wet skimate....but I don't mind cause it's too easy to replenish what you've lost with wet skim. On the same note I haven't moded my remora yet with a "2/4L" bottle, anyone done that yet. I just want to make sure I don't crack the skimatecup when I drill out a hole for a flow tube.

Haha, thanks for the laugh I would more accuratly state that "You get no skimmate in the cup as it all overflows onto your carpet".

Red Sea should just stop building skimmers.

I hear ya. When I started the pellets the skimmate got much darker and smellier within a week. After a couple of months of running the pellets NO3 levels had dropped from 20 to 0. When the NO3 & PO4 levels were reduced the skimmate went back to normal. I'm assuming you will find the same thing after running the pellets for awhile and they do their job.

Dry skim on my Aqua Medic. Thick almost black skimmate, clean out once a week.

Here is mine this morning. 24H of production. A little wetter than normal because I fed Coral Frenzy after lights out last night.
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...merboy/skm.jpg

Forget Coral Frenzy! I figured you must have fed your fish a steak dinner to create that much waste!

I skim dry. Has anyone noticed a difference in how their tank is (water quality or appearance in corals) between skimming wet or dry?

I have almost no skim mate on my 75 running pellets. I clean maybe ones every three weeks. On my 150 I have a overflow canister I am about the same on that about three weeks both are dry skim.

Here is a weeks worth of what I generate. I skim dry because that seems to be the way my skimmer (PM Bullet 3) is meant to work.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture065.jpg

When I started running my pellets after 2 weeks I have almost no skim mate but I had close to zero readings to begin with.

I did that on mine when I ran one just use a dull drill bit and go slow you want to melt your way through.

I have a Red Sea Prism on my 29 and it works good for this size of tank. Granted I havn't tried any other brands but I get quite a bit of skimmate.

I empty my cup every 3 days or so and its certainly not wet :mrgreen:, certainly not of the weak stomach!

Skimmer settings
 

Thanks this was helpful, i changed my skimmer settings to the wetter side, this is better right?

I tend to run a bit more on the dry side. The thick sludge is gross to clean but I can last 4-5 days before having to clean it whereas when I run on the wet side I have to clean it every day, because it fills up so fast.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...p/P7160476.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...p/P7160477.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...p/P7160478.jpg

My skimmate sucks. I don't know if I'm stupid, or if the Tunze 9002 skimmer just sucks (I like to think it's more the latter), but after almost 2 years in operation, I can never get it "just right".

Skimmer
 

i think my skimmer is a piece of crap then...
it is a WEIPRO,MODEL# SA-2013,Venturi Driven Protien Skimmer,Tank size...125 g/l, Pump capicity... 500g/l....7Ft/210cm


AYY IDEA???