Failed protein skimmer

The pump on my coralife 125 protein skimmer suddenly decided to fail. I have found several places on the internet that have the replacement pump but all of them are backordered. I’m now considering making this an excuse to upgrade to an ASM.

My question is, how long can I go without the protein skimmer. The natural filtration for the tank is strong and I don’t have any issues with algae blooms or sudden variations in water parameters. Will I be ok for a week, more then a week? If anyone has experienced the same issue how long did you go?

 

well, with two tangs and a butterfly fish and 4 small fish, you may have some buildup of nitrates occur. but behold, Water changes can fix all of that

 

What corals are you keeping in the tank? With SPS's you will need a skimmer soon but with just softies you can get buy for a while without one.

 

from sig, i say mostly softie with a hammer coral

 

Keep close eye on water params...

Frequent & significant water changes may be needed.

Maker sure good circulation and surface agitation.

Oh, and of course, me being the "airstone guy" - I would run one of those also till new skimmer in place.


Good Luck!

 

Good advice. It's easy to forget the incredible amount of oxygenation performed by the protein skimmer.

 

And after reading all those threads i forgot to mention the airstone, bad aquaboy, bad.......

 

Thanks for all the replies,

The first thing I did was add the air stone, I have read about the consequences of not having one when the skimmer fails. Fortunately I'm lucky to have enough LFS in town that after calling about 4 of them I found the ASM to replace the Coralife.

Everything is once again in harmony8)

 

OMG the same thing happened to me. I had to re order the pump from bigalsonline and had to wait a week before it came in. During that week, I had to moniter the water quality constantly and I was back to using my noisy skilter which did nothing but add oxygen to my tank.

I was a little late, but I had to chime in.