Skimmer waste food for Copepods??

[yOdaddy]

So I was doing a water change and realized that I forgot to dumb the waste out of my skimmer but realized that it had overflowed and now all the waste had gone back in my system (I have an in sump skimmer). Well anyway its designed to go back up into my display and now a week later my display is filled with Copepods like never before. I was scared of a nitrate spike but all test turned out fine. All my corals are doing fine, almost like never before but again this can be my imagination. So my question is that maybe its a coincident, but does the skimmer waste contains food for Copepods?

 

[yOdaddy]

I don't feed phytoplankton or zooplankton just brine. i have madarins, but recently 1 died carpet surfing. Could that be a possibility that the Copepods exploded? I have always payed attention around the glass for Copepods but never have I ever seen this much before, almost overnight!

 

[KatahdinKid]

would be a cool experiment to conduct in order to determine if skimmer waste dosed to a copepod propagation system would have a positive effect on pod reproduction. would have to be done clinical style in order to determine true value over anecdotal/coincidental results.

I doubt that the loss of one mandarin, as long as you had more than one, would have that kind of an effect on a pod population. more than likely something else triggered the population boom, possibly tied to the increase of nutrients/deterius in the system due to skimmer overflow. I know in my previous tanks when i had decreased skimming at periodic intervals i saw positive responses in my corals. FWIW

 

[yOdaddy]

would be a cool experiment to conduct in order to determine if skimmer waste dosed to a copepod propagation system would have a positive effect on pod reproduction. would have to be done clinical style in order to determine true value over anecdotal/coincidental results.

I doubt that the loss of one mandarin, as long as you had more than one, would have that kind of an effect on a pod population. more than likely something else triggered the population boom, possibly tied to the increase of nutrients/deterius in the system due to skimmer overflow. I know in my previous tanks when i had decreased skimming at periodic intervals i saw positive responses in my corals. FWIW

I would do the experiment but don't have any tools or experiences. Wonder if anyone in here have that talent and the equipments to do that? Maybe try and find what is the skimmer is pulling into the waste collection cups?

 

[Haulin Oates]

Skimmer waste food for Copepods??

Guess what? My skimmer went crazy yesterday and overflowed 3 times yesterday, and now I'm seeing the same effect! I had wiped out my pod population when I dosed h2o2, and hasn't really seen then recover, but today they're all over the rocks and glass! There might be something to this theory!!

 

[yOdaddy]

Guess what? My skimmer went crazy yesterday and overflowed 3 times yesterday, and now I'm seeing the same effect! I had wiped out my pod population when I dosed h2o2, and hasn't really seen then recover, but today they're all over the rocks and glass! There might be something to this theory!!

The only thing is I know its time consuming and almost near impossible to find out every single particle or living organism inside the collection cup without the proper skills and equipments but if we can find out the food source of the copepods (phytoplankton, zooplankton, etc) we might have a lead. Is there anyone with a healthy reef tank that doesn't run a skimmer? And with the results of an overload abundant amount of Copepods?

 

[Haulin Oates]

Skimmer waste food for Copepods??

The only thing is I know its time consuming and almost near impossible to find out every single particle or living organism inside the collection cup without the proper skills and equipments but if we can find out the food source of the copepods (phytoplankton, zooplankton, etc) we might have a lead. Is there anyone with a healthy reef tank that doesn't run a skimmer? And with the results of an overload abundant amount of Copepods?

Liquid Kingdom in Broomfield doesn't run skimmers on any of his tanks. I might run over there this weekend and talk to him... Haven't been there in a while!

 

[yOdaddy]

Liquid Kingdom in Broomfield doesn't run skimmers on any of his tanks. I might run over there this weekend and talk to him... Haven't been there in a while!

Makes me want to start dosing skimmer waste but please keep me updated on his thoughts, theories, and conclusions!

 

[Haulin Oates]

Skimmer waste food for Copepods??

Makes me want to start dosing skimmer waste but please keep me updated on his thoughts, theories, and conclusions!

Will do!

 

[cdrewferd]

Liquid Kingdom doesn't run skimmers as they believe that since they pull both the good and the bad from the system, that they aren't work running.

 

[kmellon]

Could this be more of a sinking ship reaction? Could the pods just be escaping the waste via your return pump? Have you checked your sump to see how many pods are still there?

 

[jahmic]

Copepods feed on phytoplankton, which feed on nutrients in your system.

My best guess: maybe you were overskimming just a bit and the waste going back into the tank fed the phyto at the bottom of that food chain. Or...even if you are skimming the "correct amount", the additional nutrients could have led to a boost in your pod population.

That being said, I don't know how quickly the pod population could grow just by adding additional nutrients to the water. Maybe your pod population just became more "active" and came out from hiding in the rocks with the influx of food...single-celled phytoplankton could definitely multiply quickly with nutrients being added to the system from the skimmer...or perhaps it's even possible to overskim to the extent that you are pulling phytoplankton out of the water in addition to unwatned organics.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a solid connection to what you saw; hopefully some more experienced people can chime in on this though...

 

[yOdaddy]

So the ultimate question would be, should I be skimming? Since my cheatos and macros do a lot of nitrate export(from waste) what good will the skimmer do besides sweeping up phytoplankton etc? Does the pros exceeds the cons when it come to skimming that's why people are skimming?

 

[jahmic]

Does the pros exceeds the cons when it come to skimming that's why people are skimming?

I read numerous threads on the topic when I first started my tank...and that seemed to be the best non-scientific consensus that I came across. Also keep in mind that your skimmer helps oxygenate your water, and might be beneficial in keeping your pH stable at night...especially if you're not running a fuge on an opposite light cycle.

I have 2 tanks running now. My 28gal cube uses a large HOB skimmer rated to ~70gal and I used to grow macro in there, but as I got my nutrients under control the macro growth slowed. I started running GFO as well and the macro suffered so I pulled it all out. My 20 gal just runs a modded AC70 with a fuge of macro and no skimmer...I also have macro in the display. Both systems seem to be healthy...but the difference is stocking. The cube is predominantly sps/lps while the 20 is all zoas aside from a couple mushrooms and a duncan. My zoas were extremely unhappy in the cube, they would shrink up and some even popped off plugs...conversely I've lost a couple "experimental" sps frags that I dropped into the 20 out of curiousity...but that very well may be due to the fact that I didn't light acclimate them going from halides to LEDs, so I can't say for sure it was a nutrient issue (I don't test for nitrate or po4).

I think it's reasonable to say that it really just depends on your system whether you can/need to run both the skimmer and the macro, and it may be worthwhile to try to find a happy medium if you're running a skimmer so that you don't have to rely solely on one form of export or the other. I know some people just run them certain times of the day to avoid the possibility of overskimming. I usually just adjust the skimmer cup on mine so I'm only emptying it once every 2 weeks rather than every 4-5 days. My monti caps tend to lose color if I'm emptying the cup 2x per week...and the new polyps toward the edge of the colony on my blue millepora tend to get a little brownish (as opposed to white) if I'm [assumedly] not skimming enough or getting lazy on water changes.

 

[Haulin Oates]

Skimmer waste food for Copepods??

I thought the idea behind skimming was to reduce organics BEFORE they turned to nitrate/phosphate? So skimming at a proper rate would take out most of the compounds, but leave enough to allow the biological processes to continue to function.

 

[jahmic]

I thought the idea behind skimming was to reduce organics BEFORE they turned to nitrate/phosphate? So skimming at a proper rate would take out most of the compounds, but leave enough to allow the biological processes to continue to function.

Would it leave enough though? I think that's the issue... trying to dial in the proper rate, or how much you need to be skimming out of your tank. Some systems do better with a dark "dry" skimmate vs a tea colored "wet" skimmate. If one of the cons to skimming is that the skimmer is capable of pulling out beneficial compounds/minerals from the system, I'd imagine it's also possible to have it tuned to a point where it's pulling out too much of the dissolved organics. Depending on how much/what you feed, and your bioload, your system may benefit more from one side of the skimming spectrum vs the other.

Another example from my own personal experience: for a while I was running purigen, gfo, and a skimmer in my cube and was getting cyano outbreaks every couple months. In knowing that cyano thrives on phosphates in the absence of nitrates (or at least a low level of nitrates), I figured that either my skimmer or the purigen (or a combination of the two) was removing too much dissolved organics from my system, and depleting nitrates too quickly. The 2 are supposed to do essentially the same thing, remove organics before they degrade into ammonia/phosphates. Wondering why I was having phosphate issues with a GFO reactor running, I checked my water on 3 occasions for nutrients at the lfs...nitrates were consistently "0" and phosphates were always below .08 (.03, .05, and .08 were my readings). Over a month ago I decided to remove the purigen from my system in the middle of a cyano outbreak. I had been dosing ZeoBak consistently for a month prior to removing the purigen with no real change. The cyano wouldn't spread, but it sure wasn't going anywhere...as soon as I removed the purigen, cyano was gone in about 5 days and never came back. And no joke...I put purigen back into the tank about 2 weeks ago, and my monti caps immediately lost color again (one frag actually died) and cyano was literally back in a day. Removed the purigen again...cyano disappeared within 2 days without any siphoning/manual removal from where it had established.

Sure, I could be quick to blame purigen itself, but the likely result of running that in my tank along with a skimmer was that dissolved organics got too low and the system suffered. When I initially took the purigen off line, my skimmer went CRAZY for about 2-3 days and I had to adjust the height of the cup to keep it from overflowing in less than 24hrs.

I can't say yet whether my montis will start doing better now that I'm attempting to get at least SOME balance of dissolved organics back into my system, but I definitely have seen the effects of over-filtration in my little system, and have gone from wet-skimming to dry-skimming to see if it helps my tank.

 

[yOdaddy]

Would it leave enough though? I think that's the issue... trying to dial in the proper rate, or how much you need to be skimming out of your tank. Some systems do better with a dark "dry" skimmate vs a tea colored "wet" skimmate. If one of the cons to skimming is that the skimmer is capable of pulling out beneficial compounds/minerals from the system, I'd imagine it's also possible to have it tuned to a point where it's pulling out too much of the dissolved organics. Depending on how much/what you feed, and your bioload, your system may benefit more from one side of the skimming spectrum vs the other.
Great point now we just have to find out how much good or bad components its pulling out..this will be hard. I'm just wondering if its nessasary to run a skimmer on any reef that's running a sump full of cheatos.. It will be nice for some to stand up and say "my tank is filled with corals and looks like its on steroids, and guess what I don't even run a skimmer!"