Protein Skimmer on Frag tank?

I would. Especially if you will be housing tempermental corals. With pristine water quality your corals will really take off. Good luck with an open top system like that though. My 14 gallon biocube is open top and I cant be gone for a day without coming back to everything being all mad about the change in salinity. An ATO would easily fix that problem but I havent had the time or energy to rig one up between all my other projects. But if you did it would make having a small frag set up way easier.

 

bump

 

I am guessing you are going to be keeping LPS/Softies...? If so than no skimmer is needed. If you are keeeping SPS then a skimmer is a good idea IMO.

 

Aquariaman, we talked about your tank before and I am petty sure you wanted to do SPS in the frag tank?

My first thought was no, you will not need a skimmer if you do not want fish. If you are doing softies/LPS then I might run w/o a skimmer...just a refugium(biological filtration) as having nutrients is beneficial to those types of coral. But as someone else mentioned, if you are going to have SPS and also feed your coral, then you might want to run a protein skimmer to better export nutrients.

Check out the Hydor Slim Skim Nano protein skimmer. It will set you back about $60-90, but that's it.

 

I agree

 

haha, yes, i have already had that problem so i build a hood. Back up in business!

 

So what i hear is lps and softies would not need a skimmer and sps would need a skimmer cause you will be direct feeding sps, correct?

 

If you want corals to grow fast, you need light, flow, food and low nutrients. So, I'd say a skimmer is more important in a frag tank thank a display, regardless if you are keeping SPS or LPS, as the skeletal growth of both will be inhibited by phosphate and nitrate and accelerated by feeding. So, in frag tank, usually growth is the most important metric. In a display, growth may be second to looks.

The exception would be soft corals, as the mechanisms that decrease the skeletal growth of SPS and LPS do not really apply as they do not have a calcium-carbonate skeleton. They also prefer higher bacteria counts, which skimming will remove.

 

In this case I would say no. With such a small volume of water I would not bother even with SPS. With this small amount of water, you can handle all your water quality needs with water changes, carbon and gfo. Carbon will be far more effective than any of the cheap skimmers on the market.

That being said, If I were building a small frag system, I would have a skimmer and not just a cheapy one. Probably I would use one of the better hang on units that are on the market. I just prefer to cut down maintenance.

 

Omg, i am so confused!!! So many people with so many different opinions i really dont know what to go with!