Thoughts on over skimming

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by sphelps

I don't have heavy light in my tank and I keep my LPS lower or in shady areas. The LPS did fine at first but lately a decrease in health in some is obvious.

From my experience higher nutrients results in healthier LPS, my first reef tank was an LPS tank, basically skimmerless and I never fed them, never have I had LPS corals as healthy as they were in that tank.


I'm willing to sacrifice some SPS color for healthier LPS, i would actually prefer to keep a more LPS dominant tank. Can any one see any potential problems resulting from running a skimmer on a half duty cycle over night?

the first thing that pops out to me is "I don`t have heavy light in my tank".

the reason this is jumping out at me is you have to think of LPS like SPS but more flesh. yes they will do good under low light if they are fed, but when you are skimming heavily how are they getting fed? when you have intense lighting just like a SPS they will expell symbiotic algae as they don't need as many to create food for them other wise they need food by being fed directly or by adsorbing it from the water colum.. if you don't target feed frequently, or like dirty water then you need enough light to sustain them. take my open brain as an example.. when I was running PS and VHO he was about 3" dia at the base (6" when expanded) and would eat 1 or 2 krill a day as I upgraded the lighting he started taking less food then it got to the point I could put mysis all over him and he wouldn't feed, but he kept growing and getting more color. when I had the tank melt down (heater got stuck on in a temp tank when I was removing the sand bed) he had a skeliton of 6 to 7" dia and would be almost 14" when expanded but he hadn't taken food in over 6 months. I could only conclude that he was getting all the food he needed from his internal algae and the lights.

so would I recomend overskimming with lower light power.. nope, you want crystal clean water you need plenty of light power.

Steve

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

the first thing that pops out to me is "I don`t have heavy light in my tank".

the reason this is jumping out at me is you have to think of LPS like SPS but more flesh. yes they will do good under low light if they are fed, but when you are skimming heavily how are they getting fed? when you have intense lighting just like a SPS they will expell symbiotic algae as they don't need as many to create food for them other wise they need food by being fed directly or by adsorbing it from the water colum.. if you don't target feed frequently, or like dirty water then you need enough light to sustain them. take my open brain as an example.. when I was running PS and VHO he was about 3" dia at the base (6" when expanded) and would eat 1 or 2 krill a day as I upgraded the lighting he started taking less food then it got to the point I could put mysis all over him and he wouldn't feed, but he kept growing and getting more color. when I had the tank melt down (heater got stuck on in a temp tank when I was removing the sand bed) he had a skeliton of 6 to 7" dia and would be almost 14" when expanded but he hadn't taken food in over 6 months. I could only conclude that he was getting all the food he needed from his internal algae and the lights.

so would I recomend overskimming with lower light power.. nope, you want crystal clean water you need plenty of light power.

Steve

I've experimented with a few of my LPS and moved them in brighter light and they would show signs of bleaching and when moved back into lower light would color back up. I think the problem is beyond lighting. It's not heavy lighting but it's not dim either; 2 x 250W DE 14K Phoenix run on HQI and two 54W 22K T5s.

Steve what are you using for a skimmer and what size tank and bio-load? Maybe you're not over skimming as much as me, my bio-load is quite small, 5 fish and I also have 3 large clams (not that there necessarily doing much nutrient export). My skimmer is rated for 250-750 gallon aquariums, having a larger skimmer is good but I'm starting to think mine is just too big.