First tank, 5.5 gallon

[gregony]

Personally, I would just change the water. Water level in a 5.5g will be difficult to control, most hang-on skimmers need the water level in the tank to stay constant.

A Penn St study published in Advanced Aquarist magazine last year sometime I think? This is as close to a scientific study as the hobby gets, I'm afraid.

Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine - Feature Article: Further Studies on Protein Skimmer Performance

[Parrothead]

Personally, I would just change the water. Water level in a 5.5g will be difficult to control, most hang-on skimmers need the water level in the tank to stay constant.

A Penn St study published in Advanced Aquarist magazine last year sometime I think? This is as close to a scientific study as the hobby gets, I'm afraid.

Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine - Feature Article: Further Studies on Protein Skimmer Performance

Interesting article, however, I don't recall seeing about how long the reef tanks for the test had been set up, etc. Also in the comments, there is a very interesting point brought up, did they allow proper time for the skimmer to go through its break-in period, and............

Greg, you still using your skimmer?????????????

[Parrothead]

"" Personally, I would just change the water. Water level in a 5.5g will be difficult to control, most hang-on skimmers need the water level in the tank to stay constant.""

The AquaC Nano skimmer does not rely on tank level to remain constant, same with my remora, the pump hangs a good 4 - 5 inches under water, if you allow you water level in your display tank to drop to that level you need to get out of the hobby cause all your gonna do is kill stuff

[Noitsacardigan]

Ive been looking around and the market for the nano skimmers seems huge. Plenty of off-brand homebrew stuff on ebay too. The prizm is too wide for the back of my tank (it's 8" wide) and the aquac would be sticking out pretty far from the top of my hood (it's only 14" from the table). I found the cheepass taam nano (supposedly a pain to dial in but does the job for some people on bigger tanks than a 5 gallon), and the aquaticlife mini 115 which is actually reviewed very well (~$50). There's still more algae growth than I like even with nitrates in check and ro water as my water source, so I may give this a shot sometime soon.

[Steve McKay]

There's still more algae growth than I like even with nitrates in check and ro water as my water source, so I may give this a shot sometime soon.

What do you mean,when you say your nitrates are in check?Would you post your test results?

[Noitsacardigan]

999 posts!

I have an API kit that has an annoyingly vague color scale but am conservatively somewhere between 0 and 5

[Steve McKay]

999 posts!

I have an API kit that has an annoyingly vague color scale but am conservatively somewhere between 0 and 5

1000 now,just call me Steve.You mean 0-10,5 and 10 are virtually the same color,if you can actually tell them apart let me know and I'll buy some glasses.I had the same problem with API so I bought a Salifert test kit it is much better.The Salifert will also test low range (0-5) as well as high range.I noticed you have crushed coral instead of sand,if you do your nitrates will always be higher than you want and will get higher as more nutrients buildup in the crushed coral.Your best bet is to remove the crushed coral and go with sand.I don't have any experience with thin layers of sand,I have a 5"DSB but I would think about an inch would be ok especially since it's a 5.5g tank.

[gregony]

I am still using my skimmer, I want that 30% out of there. They'll have to pry my skimmer from my cold, dead fingers.
As far as whether they broke them in, they said they ran their homemades for 30 days.

Is this instance, two separate trials were pursued, each with a different skimmer, which itself along with GAC was running continuously during the 30-day period. What might we expect? If naturally occurring TOC consumers like bacteria clear up most, but not quite all of the TOC introduced by feeding (its impossible to tell over the 24-hr time period of the above experiments), then perhaps there will be some "remainder" that either accumulates over time, or with skimming, perhaps is removed by that method. These experiments were not run on the author's reef tank like the remainder of the experiments described in this article; rather, they were run on Sanjay Joshi's 500-gallon reef tank

I've seen that tank, its broke in.
Hence, the age-old "change the water" advice.
Irregardless of the study, I'm still jealous of Steve's Alpha 170.

I think people get hung up too much on the difference between nitrates reading 10 or 0. Obviously nitrates will never truly be 0. It's not possible, unless you have nothing living in your tank. So if your test kit measures anything less than 10 you would be just fine for anything. A guy who farms corals for a living told me that for SPS, as long as your nitrates are 10 or less you'll be fine, 40 or less for most LPS(this was before the Acan craze, I don't know anything about Acan's except that fools, err, I mean enthusiasts are willing to pay 200 bucks for a small colony), and 80 or less for softies. Fish will tolerate even more. I truly believe (and the data from this protein skimmer study somewhat supports) that its the ecosystem that predominately makes the difference between a good reefkeeping experience and a poor one. As long as you don't overload that ecosystem, you should be OK. Having a nice skimmer is a good thing, not solely based on whether or not it skims better than anything else out there, but for little things, like noise, and "set it and forget it", and pump not failing after 8 months
There are fish only tank keepers all over the country that have never used a protein skimmer and gotten along just fine. Heck, I had a Skilter 250 on a 55g and the fish did OK. Don't ask me how high the nitrates were, you don't want to know.
A 5.5g tank doesn't "need" a protein skimmer. A 50g bag of salt costs less than 20 dollars. That's enough for more than a year's worth of water changes!

[Steve McKay]

The skimmer option is up to you,since I would suggest frequent water changes anyway to keep your Ca,Alk and Mg levels up w/o having to add them separately but I would test them to make sure you have the correct amount.To save money I would buy salt in bulk (bucket).

gregony,your lucky I only payed $105 including shipping for my Acan or I'd be on you.

[Noitsacardigan]

Kind of in a holding pattern now but will post up some pics whenever I make some additions. For now I want the 2nd light hooked up for some sps frags for sale locally, without the water temp going crazy. Will probably hook up some computer case fans to the diy hood and see if that keeps the temp more stable. Thanks for all the info so far everyone.

[Noitsacardigan]

The clown is looking sick as hell. Staying at the top 1/2 inch of water and breathing heavily, only for the last 15 minutes. Washed the filter (its a whisper 10 filter, those pre packaged carbon and floss "bags"), and did a water change, and it started just now. Water temps were synchronized before I added the new water (ro water, salinity also matched).

When rinsing the filter I noticed some black specs in the rinse water, must've been carbon. If it's in the fish's gills is there anything you can do for this

[Noitsacardigan]

Well the fish was fine... 3 or 4 hours later he was chilling in his usual place by the frogspawn. No idea what happened but if I had to guess it was some carbon. I had just rinsed the filter in the sink and this time did it in standing water (instead of running) and saw quite a few black specks that probably were released into the tank. I'm also wondering if even the small amount of water left on the filter when it went back to the tank released some chlorine - will keep some old tank water for this now.

Ordered a Rio Nano skimmer last week (still on backorder) and was thinking of upgrading the old powerhead. It seems too directional (low flow but high velocity straight out of the nozzle) and the output may not be what it used to be... Any suggestions? I was looking at the hydor koralia nano, 240gph, but dont want to overpower my little tank. Thanks guys

[rluix]

I've heard 5 is damn small especially for a beginner... my brother had a bigger tank for 3 or 4 years before starting this little one to have at his apartment. So far so good, the clown is like 4 years old as is the frogspawn, even in the crappy conditions before. The pics are with a second, 28w all 10,000k bulb (not 50/50) disconnected (you can see it sitting on the hood). May just switch over to one bulb.

What parameters are most likely to give me trouble? test kits are expensive! I can only watch salinity and nitrates as of now. If I'm changing a gallon or two every two weeks I can't see pH as going too crazy but who knows what it is for the ro water I bought tonight. Guy at the aquarium store said I shouldn't worry about adding calcium or anything at this stage since it'd be supplied even by the ro water at sufficient levels for the meantime. Here's how the tank used to look, with xenia all over the place

Holy Cow, thats what i call a pulsating problem!

[Noitsacardigan]

Got an amazing deal locally on some sizable items... Picked up a tiny devils hand coral (about 1cm long, was tossed in the bag along with an even smaller shroom), pompom xenia, green star polyps, and a striped mushroom. Everything is doing well - the pic was this morning and the green star has since come out. also you can see my nerdy 80mm computer case fans I'm using for cooling - can run both pc bulbs now. The blue led's are my "moonlighting" lol. Nano skimmer's been on backorder so that's not in yet but everything's doing well. Any recommendations on that powerhead?