Taking my Skimmer offline

Frogger · #1 09-24-2018, 03:49 AM

Right now I am down a couple fish, I had a couple mid sized tangs, 2 large clowns, a large melanarus wrasse, 2 green chromis and one anthia. I have about 3 to 400 hundred snails, copepods and manly SPS with one very large frogspawn in a 75 gallon tank. I feed moderately and feed the tank copepods, rotifers and phytoplankton. So moderate load and a moderate input of organics.

No matter what I add my tank just eats it up. I have been running a large tunze skimmer and it has been dialed all the way back for months.

Unfortunately I quarantine every thing for at least a month before I add it to the tank. I had a nice foxface in the quarantine and after 3 weeks he kicked the bucket. I am waiting for another one spot foxface and a captive bred coral beauty from J&L. Also trying to get other fish but am very particular about what I want in the tank.

Adding fish is not going to be the short term solution.

Cujo#31 · #2 09-26-2018, 04:17 AM

My skimmer goes off line for 12 hours. 9 pm to 9 am for the very same reason, to keep Nitrates at detectable levels. If I have to adjust down for any reason I will run the skimmer 18 hours. I rarely ever have to dial down Nitrates and phosphate is left to wander although I have a tough time getting the numbers past .07 and test with Hanna.

DKoKoMan · #3 09-26-2018, 02:15 PM

That’s crazy! It’s definitely interesting how different tanks function and what the nutrient uptake is. If I don’t run GFO my phosphates will sneak up to 0.08ppm (Hanna checker) and nitrates are usually 5-10ppm. I feed my fish twice a day and not super heavy. I have my Vertex Alpha dialed pretty wet and utilize an area in my sump as a refugium for growing chaeto. Even with all that, I do a 30g biweekly WC and nitrates go as low as 5ppm. I utilize a small amount of GFO in a reactor to keep the numbers down around 0-.02ppm. Although I do not believe they are ever really zero for phosphate.

My tank has very little algae on the rocks or glass. My sps are starting to take off finally which is nice to see. I guess I just have a hard time understanding how your guys nitrates are nonexistent and I wonder what is consuming them so quickly.

Frogger · #4 09-26-2018, 04:36 PM

I have 2 tanks, one has nitrates around 2ppm that has been set up for over 15 years. It is perfectly balanced.

My other tank as is Cujo's is newer. I had added clean rocks with no phosphates (cooked them for a year and a half). It is a 75 gallon tank and I need to add 60mls of homemade sodium nitrate solution and 6mls of Potassium nitrate daily.

It is crazy how much nutrients I have to add just to keep my nutrients from bottoming out. I do grow algae in my turf scrubber and have some algae in the tank since my tang passed away but the algae in the tank is really not growing.

If I let my nitrates zero out I get cyno. I am also afraid I will get dinos if I let the nitrate zero out. I have had it happen in a different tank and zero nitrates and phosphates are not a good thing.

It could be that the rocks are still absorbing nutrients and that is why it gets sucked out of the water.

I have had the skimmer off for 2 days and have not seen a reduction in the nutrients my tank use up. Measured last night 1ppm nitrates. .02ppm phosphates.

Frogger · #5 10-05-2018, 06:33 AM

It has been 11 days since I have turned off my skimmer. I have seen no reduction in the amount of nitrates and phosphates I have to add to maintain measurable amounts of nutrients.

I think I might just run the skimmer for 6 hours at night to help oxygenate the tank and to remove some docs.