Skimmerless?? Anyone??Miracle Mud??

[Canadian Man]

Originally Posted by Bob_I

I know you are all waiting, but in my defence the question was asked I do not use a skimmer of any kind, no sump, no water changes, no refugium, no Miracle Mud, no testing. and last but not least NO PROBLEMS.

Oh and I almost forgot, no RO/DI water either.

I do use Chemipure in a Fluval filter. That's it.

No problems? What about the algae in your pics?

Oh and are you not using that skimmer you were using a few weeks ago

[EmilyB]

Bob just changes tanks every few months, haven't you guys figured that out yet? ...

[Seth]

Mineral Mud rocks. But I think just sand is fine. The calerpa grows like crazy with mineral mud. Sometimes I think it grows too fast.

I think skimmerless tanks are fine. I never really had any major algae problems like alot of people do except for the inital cycle period when I got cyano but that went away pretty quickly. I never had any hair algae problem nor any bubble algae problem. I have this brown fuzzy algae right now but I only had like 2 snails in my tank. Now that I've added more snails, the brown fuzzy stuff is no problem either.

I am not saying skimmers are useless. Skimmers are very good indeed! After I added a skimmer, water quality seemed to be even better. The water was noticably clearer and my sps seems to color up better.

I'm using RODI water also so that contributes to my virtually algaeless tnak.

[TNTCanada]

I tryed some sea grass from a local beach didn't grow for me the roots are sill in my tank the seem to be still a live but the tops died in a couple of weeks the roots have been in there for a month or so. I only have crushed coral in my tank no sand yet that might make a difference.

[Beverly]

Doug,

My three marine display tanks (28g H. whitei tank, 42g mixed soft/lps/sps hex reef, 72g softie reef) are skimmerless, sumpless and refugless.

Do weekly 15% water changes on them all. Prior to the water change, I clean the glass, then vigorously turkey baste the lr, and gently baste sandbed and corals, which clouds the tank up pretty good. When the tank clears in a hour or so, I remove the powerheads, clean them (detailed below), remove 15% of the water, then add the new water.

All three tanks have Hagen powerheads with quickfilter attachments filled with foam and each week the PHs are removed, broken down and cleaned in tapwater with a toothbrush (never used in anybody's mouth). Impeller chambers are cleaned with q-tips. An amazing amount of crud gets trapped between the parts of the PH, and weekly cleaning definitely makes them run more efficiently.

Foams get special treatment. I get a 2 litre container, fill it 1/4 full of outgoing changewater, and squeeze the living heck out of them. When the water gets dirty, I dump it and get more water, then squeezed them some more. I continue dumping the water until the foams are clean and the water is clear. Foams, even after only a week, pick up huge amounts of crud. And after the basting, even more crud is picked up and exported.

Never had cyano or other algae blooms in any of my tanks with this method, but do encourage the growth of various MA that has come in on the rock so they will suck up nitrate and phosphate.

HTH

[BCOrchidGuy]

That's great Beverly, thanks for the input. I've started steering away from the hagan power heads because of corrosion on the shafts, I've tried the hagan pro power heads and like them alright, they sure don't work under pressure though.

Doug

[Beverly]

Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy

That's great Beverly, thanks for the input. I've started steering away from the hagan power heads because of corrosion on the shafts

You mean the impeller shaft? Hmmm... I haven't had any problems with impeller shafts, except when I've broken one, which taught me a lesson not to clean in there with a toothbrush

If I leave the powerhead uncleaned for over two weeks, which is rare, the impeller and shaft, all the way to the very bottom, gets a huge slime build up. I'm sure this impairs performance. Even when I break down and clean it weekly, I notice an improvement in water movement when I plug the thing back in.

I would imagine slime build up would be apparent in all powerhead impeller chambers if not cleaned frequently, no matter what brand they are.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Beverly, yes the impeller shafts, I believe they are stainless steel, and I've found they go black. I'm assuming this is a form of corrosion. I know they can get pretty slimely, I like the pro series because they have the ceramic shafts. Alot of people say they have had trouble with the Rio's but I never did, but that was still worrysome enough for me to move away from them.

Doug

[Doug]

Doug,
I have never had a problem with Hagen powerheads. Used them for more years than I care to remember. Never has one failed me. I would use no other kind myself. I,m going to look at the shafts, as I no not of which you speak.

On the skimmerless issue. I have tried many ways but always end up going back to my skimmers. Even with the use of my multi-billion $$$$$$ scrubber.

Thinking of giving it another try on my new 75g sps cube. Currently is running a large beckett, direct from the tank. My turf scrubber was rated for 250g, but it had trouble filtering my 225g. Perhaps I fed to much. Anyhow, one would think it would do well on the 75, even if its all sps.

Seems aquarists now feed their sps corals, so perhaps a skimmerless but turf scrubbed tank would also do well for them. I plan on using the flow from my stream pumps to keep the crap in suspension, until taken out by powerfilters.

[Beverly]

Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy

Beverly, yes the impeller shafts, I believe they are stainless steel, and I've found they go black.

Doug, will keep an eye out for that, as I have never noticed it. As Doug L. has said, I too have used 802s and smaller Hagen PHs for as long as I can remember and have not yet experienced problems.