Pros vs Cons: Wet Skimming vs Dry Skimming

[Kev311]

I ran a dry skimmer on my old 120 and now I do somewhere in-between on my 30. But lord knows the dry skim gave me that lovely fish butter... great on toast.

"Fish butter" great on toast lol I just threw up in my mouth a little

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[nicodim55]

I'm with "fish butter" thing:wink: lol. I guess I'm in the middle somewhere, the liquid it pulls out is really dark and the deposit on the side is really thick.

 

[Tradewinds]

When I skim wet, it smells a lot worse.

Does anyone know of any actual research that has been done on this topic?

 

[Reeflogic]

Old thread needs some love. What is everyone running these days with the newer style skimmers? I picked up a NYOS Quantum a few months back and still really trying to find it's sweet spot. Just curious to see how other folks skim.

 

[mniemann]

Somewhat in the middle,with a lean towards the dry side.

 

[jetmaker]

Mid to dry aqua max c01

 

[dacianb]

Since 4 days I changed my skimmer to as dry as possible to see what is happening. It is pooling out some kind of brown dried foam, not liquid at all. After 3 days nitrate level dropped from 0.5 to 0.25.... Experiment will continue for the following days. Skimmer is Bubble Magus Curve 7 in a normal loaded RS Reefer 350.
Keeping it wetter, have that tea looking skim, but never saw dark brown stuff in it. Can be overrated for my tank?? According to specs is somehow 3X more than my tank needs.

 

[jetmaker]

My skim is almost black

 

[dacianb]

My skim is almost black

As I red before buying it, Bubble magus are OK skimmer (not the best, but not the worst either). During cycle of the tank, algae blooms he pulled out lot of black liquid. But then the liquid in cup became lighter and lighter, and I continued to set it on drier and drier, but from tea outcome setting jumps to dried foam setting and makes me nuts. May be that bioload is too light for it?

 

[jetmaker]

Nah big skimmer only means it will remove more waste mine has black skim and I have no bad algae.

 

[dacianb]

Nah big skimmer only means it will remove more waste mine has black skim and I have no bad algae.

it is personal now.... either this skimmer will give me coffee or.... :mad:
joking, my tank is doing great, maybe I didnt find yet the sweet point of adjustments.

 

[aereaus]

In between, i like it thick but wet. Takes a while to adjust

 

[aereaus]

Wet skimming is great but it does affect salinity and requires emptying a lot mors

 

[hart24601]

As I red before buying it, Bubble magus are OK skimmer (not the best, but not the worst either). During cycle of the tank, algae blooms he pulled out lot of black liquid. But then the liquid in cup became lighter and lighter, and I continued to set it on drier and drier, but from tea outcome setting jumps to dried foam setting and makes me nuts. May be that bioload is too light for it?

It's easy to oversize a skimmer. That doesn't exactly sound like typical oversized issues though - although I might not be reading it right. . Typically when one oversizes you adjust it for perfect skim, then after a while (hours to days) you notice the skimmer isn't producing anything at all!! So you adjust it a lot and raise the level. You then find it puking out the skimmer cup later.

This is because if the neck size is too large they tank doesn't have enough organics to make a head, so it dies down. When organics build up again then it skims regularly. I had this issue and it took me a while to figure it out. I can't say if it really matters or not, but that is the typical hallmark of a too large skimmer. You can't really overskim a tank exactly, but you can put a too large of a skimmer in and get inconsistent skimming.

 

[Rogergolf66]

Tagging

 

[bobman]

I have usually run over sized skimmers and what hart24601 says is somewhat true. It will stop skimming and because of that yes you will not get consistent amounts of skim for the most part. However with that said if your are getting consistent skim it is my opinion your skimmer is to small. My reasoning for this opinion (again just my opinion I don't have and data to back it just experience) is we never feed the tank the exact same amount of food every time. Even if we say we feed 1 frozen cube everyday so its the same well it really is not because whats is that cube is not consistent. The fish consuming the food is not consistent. Sometime they will eat all the food sometimes not. If they do eat all the food they process the food at different rates. So day to day and week to week organics in our tanks will vary. This will cause the skimmers production to vary with it. So if your skimmer is pulling the same amount every day I would have to believe that it is not keeping up with the tank and that's why it is always skimming at the same rate as that's all it can skim from the water in that amount of time. Now if your skimmer slows down or stops producing skim then it is most likely due to the fact there is nothing left to skim. I noticed on my tank when I had a nitrate issue I cut back feeding to once a week and what I noticed was after I fed the tank the skimmer would produce skim for a few days then would produce less and less then eventually produce little to no skim till I fed the tank again. So it is my opinion that you really cant have to big a skimmer. You can have somewhat to big a neck as waste collects on the neck and can fall back into the system however my cleaning it regularly I really don't see that being much of an issue.

As far as wet vs dry again my opinion is I doubt it really makes much of a difference as long as you are not on the extreme side of either. To wet you lose water and will effect salinity however a good aquarist will check his salinity and adjust if and when needed. However to wet and everytime you feed you can and will cause your skimmer to overflow thus reducing the effectiveness of the skimmer. To dry and the skimmer will have to work to hard to get skim into the neck and cup and will result in water just essentially just pass through the skimmer without really being skimmed thus reducing the effectiveness of the skimmer. So a happy medium in my opinion would be best.

I run my skimmer so I get some liquid in the cup looks like coffee but don't smell like it and the neck and riser tube will have pretty thick nasty crud on it. I clean it about weekly reguardless if the cup is full or not to get the crud out of the skimmer.

 

[Bruce Burnett]

My skimmer is a reef dynamics IS-450 way oversized for my system. It will run wet after feeding then dry and will stop skimming until I feed again. I shut it off for 4 hours when adding amino acids or trace elements or it will overflow in seconds. When I had a smaller skimmer is would never stop skimming. Even on a 300 gallon system I still have to raise salinity each month. I don't do water changes except to replace what the skimmer removes.

 

[Atif]

I have reef octopus and it wet skimming well a lot of junk in dark color and to smelly....

 

[dacianb]

This is my dry foam skimming thing I was talking about. Lot of junk, solid particles as well, but cup full of dark foam. Sometimes this foam comes out through the holes on cover and do a kind of hat for skimmer

 

[tjnorthdakota]

maybe a stupid question but could you get the same effects of wet skimming by using oversize skimmer for the tank set to dry skim? I mean if your skimmer gph is close to your return gph you would be running more water through a dry skim not missing as much wouldnt you?