Tank without Skimmer
 

I'm thinking about running my tank without a skimmer. How will this affect my water conditions? Anyone else on the board do the same?

75 gal
100 lbs LR
2 clowns
2 mandarins
cleaner shrimp

I am currently running a 55 gal without a skimmer and all my levels seem ok. What I do is top off the water when it evaporates. The only problem I am currently having by running skimmerless is lots of hair algae on the glass but it seems the turbo snails are getting rid of it. I also ran a 10 gal skimmerless and did the same. I had the hair algae issue too but after a few weeks it dissapeared on its own and the tank ran no problem after that. I find that the corals I keep seem to grow better in the conditions mentioned above since they are mostly filter feeders (gsp, xenia, zoos, palys) not sure how other stuff would do in my water. Levels running this way are all zero except for minimal nitrates.

I've noticed some people on reefcentral have 120+ up to a 220 or so without a skimmer and they claim their tanks have flourished for years, so yiu should be alright as long as you are near religious in the maintenace...

I've even run nano tanks with out a skimmer.
As long as you keep up on the water changes you will be fine.

I think your bigger issue would be keeping a large enough pod population in a 75Gal to keep to mandarins fed.
Unless of course there accepting processed.

Soft Corals like a Skimmerless system.

Have a look at Andreas' 72G skimmerless reef on http://www.reefvideos.com/. He has no skimmer and his tank is very healthy.

I'm willing to bet that 80% or more of us are running less than adequate skimmers to begin with :D

Removing the skimmer from most of our systems due to above would more than likely account for less than 10% difference in what you're seeing now!

I've run tanks as small as 2.5g and as large as our current BB 120g skimmerless. As long as the fish load is low, you don't over feed, keep non-invasive macroalgae to consume nutrients, and you do weekly maintenance all should be well. Have been running our skimmerless BB 120g for well over a year with no nitrate.

Also, as with any reef, make sure you keep an eye on alkalinity, calcium and magnesium levels to help your corals grow.

reply
 

If you want to keep a bunch of SPS I don't think going skimmerless is a good idea. Softies and LPS won't mind though. I just picked up a bunch of corals from my friends virtually skimmerless system, and his softies were amazing, even though the rest of the tank was covered with bubble algae.:mrgreen:

sounds good. I'll start running my tank skimmerless and see what happens. I do weekly water changes so that shouldnt be a problem.

not to worry, they eat frozen mysis shrimp :biggrin: