My 72 Mixed Reef (She's Coming Down)

beautiful tank!

 

love your tank man good work

 

About 2 months ago my protein skimmer died, and I put it up for sale here in 3reef. My tank has been running without a skimmer with the same bioload as before, in fact I added a small wrasse so the bioload actually went up.

Strange thing is that I see no noticeable difference only the filter sock gets dirty faster and the algae in my fuge is flourishing.

The DT is perfect, no hair algae, no cyano and everyone is getting plenty of oxygen and my corals are great. Even the film algae on the glass doesn't seem as bad as it used to be.

The sock and sump get around 1000 gph of flow combined with two Koralia 3's for gas exchange and flow. And the fuge is backed way down probably around 100 gallons gph max.

So for my particular setup with my husbandry, maybe a skimmer isn't a critical price of gear.

Anybody else running a healthy, skimmerless reef tank?

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No skimmer here, been that way for 7 months

All parameters stable, no noticeable algae growth.

It is a 28 gal, with 3 fish.

I love skimmers and they are a great thing, but you can run a healthy and attractive tank without one if you keep the feedings within a reasonable amount and not overstock IMO.

 

I have 6 fish in a 72 which is the same ratio as you. I fed the corals twice a week and the fish eat whatever the corals don't. The live rock supplies the rest of the fish food.

 

agreed.

I feed my corals a little less than that to be honest. I feed my fish similar manner (which is to say I don't )

I don't always run my skimmer. It often runs without making skimmate.

Your parameters will tell you if you need to plug one back in.

I would advise owning a working one though... you may find a build up in a few months and want to skim it out...

 

Good point, a think a good solid water change would do the same.

 

Haven't looked at this thread in awhile. The tank is looking awesome. That turbo is HUGE! I thought my LFS had some huge ones in his display.

 

The 430 gallon tank with med/low bioload where I work has not had a protein skimmer ever. All our maintenance consists of are bi-weekly water changes of roughly 15%. All is doing well!!! We have 2 Koralia Mag 8s and a HUGE CUC (2000+ snails) from reefcleaners and everyone that comes into our office - the first thing they notice is the beautiful and gigantic fish tank in the front!!!

 

Beautiful tank!

My 29 gal is skimmerless and fugeless, though there is calurpa in the tank, which is now being controlled by a lawnmower blenny so we no longer have to pull it out occasionally.

It is fairly heavily stocked with 2 clowns, a damsel and 2 blennies (the other being a yellow tail fangtooth). But thoe only active swimmer is the damsel as the clowns stay in thier corner and the yt blenny hides till feeding time and the other just cleans the glass and rocks or hides.

I feed everyday and just noticed some hair algae growing and a touch of cyano after our big snail died and wasn't caught that quickly, before that we've had no recent issues (the tank is 11 months old so we had the usual breaking in algae/cyano stuff).