Probably the most provocative article in a long while...

[kwirky]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/8/aafeature3

It's a LONG read but holy cow, there's a lot in there... Feldman and Maers are on to something here I think...

First they provide actual data explaining the reason why excessive dosing of carbon systems bleaches coral. The TOC (total organic carbon) increase causes the corals' natural bacteria population to double and kill the coral. Hence why dosing too much zeostart or vodka can nuke a tank.

Then they looked at data comparing TOC of their tank running the skimmer and without and found that the TOC didn't change much. They did say it's early evidence and requires more testing of other aquariums, but the results show that heavy skimming didn't affect the TOC of the tank a whole lot. How scandalous!?

It's a provocative article that follows the current trends in the hobby (and the environmental issues surrounding coral reef bleaching in the wild). But really, who is going to give up their meshwheel skimmers when they empty their collection cup from that nasty brown stuff?

But yah, read the article. It's not an easy read but there's just SO much interesting stuff to talk about in there