two bad skimmers = 2X better?

[astroboy]

I've been vodka dosing and my hunch and the consensus of people who answered my recent post "vodka, transparent slime, fused sand layers" are that my skimmers aren't up to the job for vodka dosing with my current setups.

 

I've had one Precision Marine skimmer on my thirty gallon; it's rated for a 50 gallon tank (for what that's worth). I have an extra PM skimmer which I could use if it would do any good. (Or, I could just stop dosing).

 

 

My question is about the characteristics of skimmers. Assuming that there's a reasonable match between your skimmer and bioload:

 

Case 1: If you have X amount of bad stuff in your tank, your skimmer will remove 50% of it, so two skimmers will remove 100% of it. That is, your skimmer removes 50% of whatever bad stuff you have at any reasonable concentration.

 

Case 2: Skimmers basically remove bad stuff down to say 10PPM, and that's it. That is, anything below 9PPM flies under the radar, regardless of how many of this particular type you're using.

 

I'm sure its not an either-or case of Case 1 or Case 2, but I'd be interested to hear what people with some experience with this had to say....

 

Thanks,

[Jon Lazar]

I would run the second skimmer. I've never heard of any testing that would help determine which of your two cases might be right and I'm sure there's lots of speculation that may sound sensible, but that doesn't mean it's true.

 

Jon

[DDiver]

IMHO biofilm and probiotic methods go hand in hand...you will get it no matter what..using gfo will not get rid of biofilm IME..you can try to reduce the amount of it though by cutting back on the carbon source..HTH

 

FWIW when i started the NeoZeo method i had biofilm everywhere, mostly on anything plastic and on the glass not so much on the sand bed..it was there even though phosphates were reading 0..i cut the carbon dosing in half and it went away over time all the while maintaining an ULNS..

Edited March 1, 2009 by DDiver