Stop and Go Skimmate!

I am new to the hobby and had a question about my skimmer. I have a Sealife Systems Sump with a built in skimmer. Its basically just a cylinder with a hole halfway down with a rio 800 with venturi and a collection cup up top. It was producing nice dark green skimmate for the last week until a few days ago when it produces for about 12 hours the stops for 12 a repeats the process. Is this normal?

 

Welcome to 3reef and yes it is normal. It probably has to do with your feeding cucle.

 

I agree, that's completely normal. Because of the way a skimmer works it can only pull out what is in the water to skim out. What is happening is when nutrients are introduced to your tank the skimmer works until it is all out. Once it's all out it will stop producing skimmate until more nutrients are introduced.

By the sounds of it your skimmer is about double what your tank needs. That is the exact range I like to run a skimmer in. If you ever get a sudden amount of nutrients introduced for unknown reasons your skimmer should be able to catch back up and keep the water clean.

Welcome to 3reef.