Do you really need a skimmer?

Singularity said:
So vitamin C is a good source of carbon ?
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Thats was the first thing that made me angry coupled with the fact the he thinks we know nothing about carbon dosing.

I will put money on it that you don't have 0 nitrates because firstly all your corals would be dead in a week. The correct phase should be undetectable and another thing is that the salifert test kit is not accurate enough to go down to 0.
 
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Pufferpunk said:
Yep & the VC boosts the nitrate-eating bacteria. It's called: carbon dosing.
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yeah that we know:part of reef keeping for the past few years but hey thats a different topic related to filtration and how your keep you levels low.All we are stating here is that corals require nitrates,how much you provide them with is up to you,as believe it or not your nitrate eating bacteria doesn't consume ALL the nitrates.Your corals grab some aswell.:)

If it did consume all then your corals would die.
 
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Falcon said:
yeah that we know:part of reef keeping for the past few years but hey thats a different topic related to filtration and how you keep you levels low.All we are stating here is that corals require nitrates,how much you provide them with is up to you,as believe it or not your nitrate eating bacteria doesn't consume ALL the nitrates.Your corals grab some aswell.:)

If it did consume all then your corals would die.
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This is what I was trying to get at. Another thing to add is that it is also impossible to have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites.
 
Yeah manic if he focuses on that single point alone instead of trying to teach us carbon dosing then he would understand.your test kits zero simply means less than 0.2 nitrates in your tank not actually zero.think about it and research about it lol it's called:google.:thumbup:
 
1st of all, I'm not a he. 2nd, I am really feeling unwelcome here. Although new to this forum, I am by no means new to keeping tanks. I have 32 years in this hobby. I have written many articles for fishkeeping magazines, was on the Crew at WWM for many years, diving with Bob Fenner, et al & written profiles for fish in books alongside Axelrod. I also have been running the #1 puffer forum for the past 12 years. I feel you are arguing about semantics here. 0 or undetectable??? C'mon guys...
 
crispin said:
what i dont understand is why one would want to go without a skimmer, especially in a FO system. the cost of a skimmer isnt high in relation to many other things in this hobby especially in rewlation to the length of time one has a skimmer. such a simple piece of equipment with so many advantages i just dont see the vallue in skimming them out.
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100% agree with this but in SA skimmers/well good ones dont come cheap but they are very important in your tank even a FO tank, I used to believe a skimmer wasnt vital in a FO system, prooved myself wrong ;)
 
Falcon said:
True manic I agree with you,Pufferpunk your test kit can only measure as low as 0,2 and to explain what manic is saying is that the other stuff like corals and algae use up the nitrates before they can be free floating in the water....leading you to believe that you have zero nitrates but infact you have much more produced.Just means your system is balanced to keep the nitrates at close to zero.

Its just being used up faster than your test kit can pick up.

Think of this hypothetical scenario...your corals etc use up say 10parts of nitrate per day but they can only easily absorb it when the concentrations are above a certain level.Now your system is usually below that level as it only produces 5parts per day,so that means they will still get the nitrates they need but not as easily as in a tank thats BALANCED at say a bit more than zero and producing 10 parts per day which is their optimal intake level hence some people keep it abit higher so that there is always available nitrates for them.

The thing to remember here is that you need to keep it balanced...too many fluctuations or high nitrate levels will be detrimental to the health of softies even.
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Pufferpunk said:
I have been dosing my tank with vitamin C for over 3 years. Believe me, the nitrate remains 0, my corals grow huge, more colorful & very healthy. So are my fish.
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I love salifert kits they are great for our hobby and I use them aswell, but I once tested the nitrates of a customers tank where the test result didnt change colour then use a digital testing station nand it registered 15ppm I then bouble checked this and no change in the result
 
Trev said:
Ok so now that I read on, why do you foreigners always ask a question when you already know the answer ?
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If I knew why that person had said that, I would't have asked. My system has many thousands of healthy pods in there, that doesn't mean there has to also be nitrate. There isn't even enough to grow cheato anymore--it dwindled away to nothing (or maybe it's just undetectable? ;))
 
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Pufferpunk said:
If I knew why that person had said that, I would't have asked. My system has many thousands of healthy pods in there, that doesn't mean there has to also be nitrate. There isn't even enough to grow cheato anymore--it dwindled away to nothing (or maybe it's just undetectable? ;))
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Ok its just very common to see this from foreigners visiting masa Crispen also does it and then when he has your answer he hits you with his oppinion which totaly contradicts yours and some times he is right. It is good entertainment LOL
 
Pufferpunk said:
1st of all, I'm not a he. 2nd, I am really feeling unwelcome here. Although new to this forum, I am by no means new to keeping tanks. I have 32 years in this hobby. I have written many articles for fishkeeping magazines, was on the Crew at WWM for many years, diving with Bob Fenner, et al & written profiles for fish in books alongside Axelrod. I also have been running the #1 puffer forum for the past 12 years. I feel you are arguing about semantics here. 0 or undetectable??? C'mon guys...
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Sorry I assumed you were a he.:)

Well the reason you're feeling unwelcome is because you're sort of undermining our knowledge as you clearly show by stating what you have and have not written.We have others here that have written lots but don't even mention it as we believe in handling each situation in light of its own facts regardless of how much experience you have as a nuclear scientist or marine biologist for that matter.You asked a question and we answered to the best of our factual knowledge,if you have more factual knowledge to disprove our theories then I for one WELCOME THOSE FACTS.

Oh and btw I apologise from my side for making you feel unlwelcome,it is not my intention and my previous comments were not a personal attack against you I was merely giving my viewpoint of the nitrates reading of zero,if you feel differently then you are welcome to state so as different viewpoints are always welcome here:thumbup:

My point is still clear,your test kit is giving you a zero reading as the low range below 0,2.Now even IF you did have a true zero it doesn't mean that your corals are not receiving any nitrates as your system is not a closed one and the addition of food ultimately leads to the addition of nitrate,unless you are somehow not adding to the nitrogen cycle by adding food??
 
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If one looks at some of the best coral outcrops some of these are just outside of a outflow system from a river where you have a sand bank also called a flat followed by a coral outcrop the sand bank is where our DSB concept comes from and the river provides plenty of nutrients for the corals. The issue with all this is that with global warming and the increase of water flow from the rivers there is to much nutrients being imported to these corals. there is definately a need for nutrients to feed corals there is no way around that. In low nutrient systems one has to introduce planktons and other food sources for corals to feed on. I had a client one time go mad about low nutrients in a mixed reef was dosing lots of stuff and is was working but it got to a stage when the SPS realy started looking good the soft corals and the LPS were fading away they eventually died away he had about 7 sps colonies and about 60 softy and lps colonies. What made him go mad about driving the nutrients so low was when he started adding sps their colors were not what they sould have been due to the highish nutrients which the LPS realy loved. Funny thing is I told him sps wouldnt do well in his tank and that if he changed things and the sps started doing better then the lps and softies would not like those conditions, and at the end when he only had about 12 sps colonies left everything else was ether gone or half dead he told me he prefered the lps so he gave the sps away and started all over again
 
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