Skimmer or no Skimmer?

[BonesCJ]

Hey everyone,

A question, my tank has really gotten dirty over the last couple months, even with regularly sucking all the nasty detritus out. I've been holding off on getting a skimmer, thinking it would help with microlife to not have one running but I feel like I am fighting a losing battle. Does anyone else run a skimmer in their macro system or have any other thoughts?

[Subsea]

I suggest you get some janitors to eat the algae detritus. I have been skimmerless for > 30 years.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FDt8QTAp0Cs

https://www.chesapeakebay.net/S=0/fi...n_grass_shrimp

[Michael Hoaster]

Great question, Chris.

I had tons of detrivores in my tank, and it still accumulated detritus. Planted tanks generate a lot. So, occasionally I vacuumed. I don't use a skimmer either. Doesn't mean you can't. Skimmers compete with many of the members of a well-rounded ecosystem. Are you missing a few players?

Maybe before spending big bucks on a skimmer, you invest (a lot less) in some key characters to help out. Also, consider getting rid of any key player predators, like sand-sifting fish and/or sea stars. Neither of these contribute to cleaning your sand bed. They eat the detrivores that do.

Here are some I recommend: Cucumber-eats dirty sand, poops clean sand. Serpent, brittle and mini stars, benthic pods, and spaghetti worms are also good. If I remember correctly, there are a few fish that eat detritus as well. I want to say some species of tangs and dwarf angels.

Best of luck to you! Let us know what you do, and how it works out.

[vlangel]

Skimmers are pretty much a must in seahorse tanks so I run a honkin' one, more than 2Xs my volume.

[BonesCJ]

Sounds good, many of my detrivores and snails got wiped out by diatom issue early in the tank. Gonna get things cleaned up manually, place an order for more snails through GCE and pull the couple of hermit crabs I have in there.

[tajaba]

Man! its been a while since I posted.

I have a seagrass and macro fuge as well. It does collect alot of detritus. But I don't think it should be vacuumed. to the contrary I think we should let it sit. I my tank is 2 years old and I never had any problem with the detritus. I have 2-3 glass shrimps in there and some snails. But the big thing if you wanna keep your sand bed detritus free is a sea cucumber. Just 1 of these will keep your sand bed clean of detritus forever. Although for us with alot of macro algae and especially if you don't remove the seagrass blades when they brown; the cucumber will keep detritus level aesthetically low.

[BonesCJ]

Definitely decided to skip the skimmer for now

I did three things.

1. Massive water change with everything stirred up

2. Part of the problem was a lack of circulation, had three koralia 850's in the tank, with the amount of macros I had in there the current just wasn't getting down to sand level. Had an old maxijet mod kit sitting around put the 1200 GPH kit in, THAT got things moving, Macros seem happier and it keeps things stirred up.

3. Started dosing nitrates again and put some phosphate remover to work. With my lower bioload following some deaths my plants were just deteriorating.

[Michael Hoaster]

Sounds like you have it worked out, Chris.

Tahaba, I agree cucumbers are great for detritus clean up. Mine is a little shy of the brightest-lit part of the tank, so he doesn't get it all. Seagrasses accumulate tons of detritus in nature. In a fuge, I'd let it pile up. In my display, I eventually removed some manually to keep it pretty-ish. It can get out of hand in a planted tank, as plants themselves generate a lot. But it's good for the ecosystem, so I try to find a happy medium.