Skimming only at night?

[Spar]

Was talking to a friend yesterday that only skims for a few hours a day (6 I think), and all is fine.

I am dealing with same heat issues lately, and am sure that a significant load of that is from my Mag 24 going to my skimmer.

My skimmer actually rarely even picks anything up anyway due to a very low bio-load in my 200g's.

Is running the skimmer only at night a feasible option? Or will it be better to skim for a couple hours during the day as well?

 

[Spar]

I have a strong fan (window-unit plastic AC dual-fan) in my canopy blowing on my light hood and across the top of the water, and a clip-on fan (fairly strong) blowing directly on my sump water. I also have fans strategical placed around the interior of my stand for air circulation.

Temps:
High - 83.7
Low - 80.8

This is pretty standard throughout the week. Actual range I am witnessed is 79.5 - 83.7.

edit>> I had a chiller, but it broke.

 

[Spar]

the canopy is just a 2x2 wood frame with MDF as the front doors. so 100% ventilated except from the front.

 

[blide]

What skimmer are you using? Have you thought about changing skimmers? A nice ASM would use less heat and should keep up with your tanks bioload.

 

[Spar]

It is a PS-300 Trigger Systems Skimmer. Pretty high quality, so no plans to change it.

 

[blide]

@Spar wrote:

I don't question the quality of the skimmer, but maybe you could run a differnt pump? Because I wouldn't really rank a Mag as pretty high quality..

 

[Rick]

Cliff I do think skimmers should be skimming something all the time. Even corals produce waste that will be taken out by skimming. You must have a really low bioload. And I do think that Mag 24 is putting a huge amount of heat into your tank. Is the skimmer sitting in the sump? Just wondering if you possibly could feed the skimmer with an external pump or in some other way.

 

[Spar]

the skimmer is external of the sump ("in-line" is the lingo, right?).

I could go with an external pump, but fear the noise will be too overwhelming.

What is a quiet and reliable pump that can be external and is > 1800gph?

Other sources of heat are:
4 Maxijet 1200's (could be wrong on the 1200 part... whatever the model that is 300gph each is)
3 Mag 9's (2 feeding the overflow, and 1 feeding my 3 phos-ban reactors [previously my chiller]).

No heater is in the tank in case anyone is wondering.

 

[Gargoyle12]

@Spar wrote:

You can remove the one mag 9 that is running your phosban reactors since they are supposed to have a max flow of 80 gph. I would change it is a MJ and that should eliminate alot of heat.

 

[Rick]

I do think that you can get an external pump that is quiet and will give you alot less heat. And I agree if you have that many Mags sitting in the water you are getting alot of heat from them. They are pretty good pumps, but to me they produce alot of heat. And such you in my case I try to eliminate anything producing heat I can. I do have a MAG 12 driving my skimmer, cannot be helped. But I run my Mag that fills the chiller externally. And my return pump is external. I run both of my phosban reactors with a Maxi-jet 600.

 

[Spar]

Are Mag 9's noisy when external? Was thinking about hooking those up external to help if possible.

The Mag 9 going to the Phosban reactors was only that strong for the Chiller purposes. I can definately switch it out. A MJ 1200 would give me a perfect 300gph / 3 = 100gph per reactor.

So I agree that I need to get that Mag 24 out of the water. Please start throwing out ideas of strong pumps that are quiet and external > 1800gph.

Thanks all for your input!

 

[waterbeing]

Spar,
You could probably drop the GPH rating on the TS300 if you used a smaller pressure rated pump too. I can't run anything larger than a Mag 12 on my 300 (due to various factors) and I've also considered moving it external and using a smaller pressure pump. Just a thought if you decide to move it external. Some of the blueline NS and HD pumps might be a choice.

Doug