Hello TR:mrgreen:

im fairly new to saltwater and dont have any experience with skimmers
im using a cheap airlift skimmer on my 14 (imp) gallon nano and was wondering if the
amount collected is resonable or should i be looking to upgrade
i change 25-30% of the water weekly:raining:
fish load is 1 clown, 1 watchman goby, 2 chromis i feed once a day but only small amounts of various frozen well rinsed foods about 20-30 seconds worth of feeding ..no leftovers

the collection cup pulls this in about 24 hours
changing the level makes no ods to skim colour just quantity

The skimmate looks a little watery for me. Can you raise the neck (or lower the water level) on that skimmer to get something thats a little darker?

Hi Microbius.....

I already posted in your other thread, but I'll do so again here. I think your skimmer could benefit from being raised a bit in your sump.

ahhh....you know what?! I think I just realized that the skimmer is sitting IN YOUR TANK! Is that right? I just assumed that it was in a sump. Well...that makes things a little more difficult.

Have you thought about putting in a sump? The advantage is that it gives the skimmer more of a chance to skim the water that is richest in proteins. By having an overflow, the protein-rich water tends to get more concentrated in a sump and then the skimmer can attack the proteins in a more efficient manner.

If this is not at all possible, I would consider a way to raise your skimmer and see if that helps.

I agree that it looks a bit thin, but it is hard to tell from the pic. How many ounces of skimmate does 24 hours produce? My Remora (non nano version, fairly loud) only pulled maybe 1-1.5 ounces of gritty "green tea" per day from my lightly fed 24g FOWLR.

I just ventured to the Red Sea site to look at your model. Is it a venturi, and airstone or both? If it has an airstone, make sure to change it regularly for best performance.

If you want to upgrade, but don't want to deploy a sump (and you can spare the dough), then the Tunze Nano 9002 skimmer would be my first choice. Compact, discrete, relatively quiet and decent skimming for a nano skimmer. If you want to run carbon, the Tunze Reefpack 200 may be an interesting combo.

many thanks for your input everyone

i will try raising the skimmer aqain too see what occurs but it seems to skim only slightly richer if i do but with a lot less quantity
its just a cheap airstone driven skimmer it pulls about 2.5 fluid ounces of that yellow liquid daily

will definately look into the tunze nano a lot of people seem to like them and noise is a factor
in skimmer choice so that might be the one as i dont want to go the sump route with this tank
due to location potential leaks/overflows are not an option(water going out and in the tank now that just scares me:eek:)

will keep trying with this one but i think an upgrade is inevitable

:up:

just a note on the skimmate again....it's okay if the volume is less, but IMO it's better to go with a darker, richer skimmate. It means the bubbles have had time to work on the water that's in the skimmer column and are hopefully able to pull out even more concentrated protein. People vary between a "wet" and a "dry" skimmate, but for your size tank...75ml is quite a bit for one day....it wouldn't hurt at all to lower the volume, but increase the density.

On a side note...I don't have any experience with hang-on-back skimmers, but if you could find one that takes water from the surface of the water, then you might find better performance for the skimmer.

By the way...how are your nitrate/phosphate parameters?

nitrate and phosphate both showing as zero :agree:

Hi Matthew and :welcome: to TR.

Your tank is very pretty. Does the skimate get darker when you stir up detritus in your tank?

greetings carmie:rolleyes:

it gets slightly darker with bits of detritus in the skimmate
tried raising the skimmer also but colour remains the same just less quantity
begining to wonder if the large water changes thus low DOC are preventing a dark skim

:unsure:

it could be that you just have low DOCs, but still....since your skimmer is sitting in the tank, it wouldn't hurt to raise it a bit more to get more air flowing through the column...with the hope of pulling more gunk out.