Turning skimmer off and on

[Mcmcoker]

I'm finally on the road to a reef ready tank. Recently purchased power heads, a quad t5 and a hob skimmer. I don't have a sump and this is the reason for the post. I bought a D&D typhoon hob skimmer. It took about three days to break in and is now really rolling the skim, however it is also still blowing a ton of micro bubbles into the tank. Needless to say this is far from aestheticly pleasing. I know that all hob skimmers will do this to some extent or another. I also know that over time it may calm down a bit more. My question is, for the time being will I be hurting the tank in any way if I only run it at night. In my case from 7pm to 7am. The tank is also running a hob floss filter with carbon and gfo. This filter is of course running 24/7. Also my bioload is pretty minimal at the moment. Oh and the skimmer is rated for a 125gal tank and my tank is only 36gal. So all in all I'm just wanting to make sure this wouldn't cause a tank crash or or that the skimmer would still work properly being turned off and on

 

[jeffaquarius]

You can minimize or get rid of micro bubbles by reducing air with its needle valve and water flow since your skimmer is over sized. You can experiment turning off at night but you need to monitor your parameter.

 

[mardarin20]

Most tankes will do just fine with just running the skimmer throughout the day and switching it of through the night. But just to make sure test the water every few days to make sure that it is not having a lasting effect on the quality of you're water.

 

[Jtisle506]

You don't want to turn on and off skimmer, it will make the skimmer less effective and it wont build its slime coat, the microbubbles should stop in a week or two

 

[melosu58]

I would just let it run. Nothing will be hurt. Yourlighting bothers me. It needs to be a t5ho system to be a reef.

 

[Mcmcoker]

I would just let it run. Nothing will be hurt. Yourlighting bothers me. It needs to be a t5ho system to be a reef.

What part of quad t5 made you assume it wasn't ho. It is a 4 bulb t5 ho system

 

[Mcmcoker]

So even though it has been running for 4 days now and is producing lots of skimmate, you guys are saying that I can expect it the bubbles in the tank to calm down even more over the next couple of weeks. Where it stands right now is driving me crazy. That's why I'm wondering about only running it at night

 

[jeffaquarius]

If your skimmer is fine tuned correctly you should have no micro bubbles in your tank and you can run it for days before the cup becomes full.

 

[Mcmcoker]

Well the problem is that this is not a conventional skimmer. This skimmer doesn't use a collection cup but rather has a concentrator cup that ejects the foam down a tube to a bucket below the tank. Based on everyone's advice I will let it run continuously for a couple weeks but at that point if it hasn't calmed down to a tolerable level I will have to resort to only running it at night. Having this many bubbles ejected into the tank just won't fly. The tank is not even enjoyable to look at the way it is.

 

[mr_X]

No, it won't hurt anything to run it constantly, nor will it hurt anything to shut it off during the day. I don't like the idea of turning pumps off and on over and over though....I believe it shortens the life of the pump.

 

[Mcmcoker]

Thank you mr x. No offense to everyone else but you and Carey seem to be the most knowledgable people I've talked to here so I was hoping you or her would chime in. As for the pump I plan on buying a back up anyway. The one the unit came with is a euro pump so it needed a converter to convert to an American style plug and I would prefer to have an American pump with a normal plug