[bongobrian]

Can anyone shed any light on this? I was reading one of Shimek's books the other night and I read something that I found kind of interesting/confusing. He wrote that protein skimmers help to remove phosphate. Does anyone know if that's true? I always thought that skimmers were only able to lower levels of nitrate....

[NaCl-H2O]

It was my understanding they don't. I used one for years and it never seened to make a difference in PO4 levels. When I got rid of the skimmer and replaced it with a refugium that helped with PO4 and NO3.

[GregD]

Brian,

IME, My understanding of the benefits of a protein skimmer are as follows-

Function 1 (foam fractionation) - This is the most common function of the skimmer. In this case the skimmer is removing particulate matter (proteins, aminos, etc) before they have a chance to fully dissolve or convert into waste. (The surface tension created by the foaming forces this particulate out of the water column into the collection cup). In this example, wastes are removed before they have a chance to convert to ammonia, then nitrite, then nitrate. (So in essence your skimmer is not directly removing nitrates, just preventing/elimintaing large amounts of waste build up that can lead to greater amounts of nitrates)

Function 2 (aeration) - As an added side effect of the foaming within the skimmer, the bubbles are helping to aerate the water (add O2)and release some amounts of CO2 through gas exchange. (Some people feed their effluent from their calcium reactor in to their skimmer to reduce the amount of CO2 added to their system as part of the calc reactor process) This helps to keep the pH more stable.

To answer your original question unless phosphates are a particulate matter (don't believe so but I am not a chemist), then I don't think a skimmer will remove them. This would leave aeration as the only way a skimmer might reduce phosphates (again a more knowledgeable chem person could probabaly answer this one better than myself)

I know that there are many ongoing debates as to other benefits, issues and side-effects of using a protein skimmer. Hopefully, as more studies are performed the reef community will continue to evolve the facts behind protein skimming.



HTH,
Greg D

[Ironreef]

Protein skimming removes inorganic phosphate from the water because the bubbling action blows the po4 off into the air. Protien skimming also removes organic sources of phosphate very efficiently,deposition them into the collection cup along with other componatesskimmed from the water. Dunno if its true but thats from The reef aquarium 1 Charles delbeek and Julian Sprung

[bongobrian]

Very interesting! I need to pick up that book, it's just so D@mn expensive!