other way to do water change

Anyone ever tried this?
Making your skimmer skim really really wet and having it drain into a large bucket or drain for a few hours... then replacing the lost water with new water just as you would with a normal WC?
I feel like this way may remove more DOC than just plain siphoning water out because it works with the surface tension of the bubbles and the charge of the dissolved molecules... whats your take?

 

hrm, I've only done it by accident but its an interesting idea.

 

Never heard of it. Does merit some thought and in theory could pull a minuscule amount of DOC out. Regular changes are done really for dilution and replenishment but your idea is not to be discounted.

 

Very interesting but I dont know how effective it would be. How do you make sure the salinity difference is correct? seems good in theory but I will keep it going the same water change way. If you think about a water change your taking that dirty water out that does not need to be skimmer because you removed it. I feel that will be better then water that may have been partly skimmed by the skimmer and overflowed. I dont know if what im saying makes sence but in my head im making a point haha. I guess best example is take dirty water and remove it or take skimmed water and remove it. seems as though you have less work just removing the water then skimming it to remove it.

 

Im just thinking to put my skimmer on overdrive and stick the drainage tube into a 5 gallon bucket. once the bucket is full, then ill put the skimmer back to normal and just dump the skimmate. then go pull 5 gallons of saltwater from my tub and dump that back into the sump. easiest water change ive ever done right there
Also, the salinity is not changed with wet skimmate so there shouldnt be any swings. also, when i do this, i will check with my refractometer to see what happens with it.

Im still interested in what anyone else thinks about this!

 

I think it makes sense. you would get rid of water with a higher concentration of waste than if u just scooped out some from the tank.
I wouldn't do it just b/c i don't want to mess with my skimmer settings.

 

I only do water changes a couple times a year and this seemed like a good way to me too. This water is noticeably discolored compared to siphoned water. However there is also noticeably less larger particulate matter. So give and take.

Personally I'm more interested in the larger particulates than what the skimmer is really pulling out. My skimmer sometimes doesn't produce skimmate, I can only assume there is only so much dissolved nasty for the skimmer to get out of the tank at any given time. Point being diminished returns. It's why getting a 500 gallon skimmer on a 50 gallon tank wouldn't make for a super clean tank.

Before you adjust your skimmer, put some of that skimmate in your refractometer... it's very salty.

Like I said, I don't do water changes very often, but over time (and very slowly) my SG drops and about once a year I have to top off with a few cups of saltwater. I don't have creep anymore since I lowered the water level in my DT. So it's got to be the skimmer.



On the flip side of this, if the superdrive wet skimmate has no difference in SG, then I also question it's measurable increase in the relative dirtiness of that WC skimmate water as compared to traditional.


Those are my random thoughts

 

Very intriguing, I'd be interesting in finding out what your refractometer says. I does sound as though it would be a fairly slow process in relation to pulling 5 gallons from the sump.

 

"no plans on ever changing the tank. I have it on VERY wet skim direct to house sewage and top off with salt water. Nitrates are at around 5."

comment from this thread on RC 27 clowns in the same tank 27 months~Thread of the Month - Reef Central Online Community

 

I believe that your skimmate is very salty because it is dry skimmate. the concentration of water becomes less while the concentration of salt stays the same because of the surface tension of the larger bubbles.

If you keep your ORP higher by mimicking the natural breakdown process, you will have less of the larger particles in your DT and your organic compounds will be broken down to their smallest levels. For example; you can put in some other peoples rocks for bacterial diversity, increase your copepod/amphipod/isopod diversity, add a cucumber, or add some detrus consuming stars. just a few options for more levels in the breakdown process.

The DOC of any individual tank will be a function of how many tiers are in the system's breakdown food-chain and how efficient each tier is, how much the tank is fed, and how much DOC is mechanically exported (usually a constant at ~29% of skimmate [Dr. Feldman, PSU]).

The reason i bring up this "skimmer" water change process is because I dont have much particulate matter accumulating at all so i know it is being broken down to simple DOC and that is what i target to export the most of... all for the health of my beloved acros of course