First, I assume that you are talking about a saltwater tank. If you do not
have coral, then there is no such thing as skimming too much. In the world
of reef tanks, there is a lot of discussion about how long to run protein
skimmers, but in my experience, if you are having trouble with red algae
(salt water slime algae, then you certainly have not stripped all of the
nutrients out of the water yet, so there is nothing to worry about. I ran a
saltwater reef tank for over three years (prior to moving and having to take
it down) with no filtration other than the live rock and running the skimmer
all the time.
MWolfe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Bock" <bockhouse_at_earthlink.net>
To: <nanfa_at_aquaria.net>
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2001 10:46 AM
Subject: NANFA-- protein skimmer
> Anyone have any idea how long to keep a protein skimmer running each day?
I
> bought a second hand skimmer (big one--holds about 3/4 gallon of water) at
> the NANFA auction last summer. I ran it for about 3-4 hours yesterday
> before stopping it because of small leaks, and it really cleared up the
> cloudy water in my sailfin-caulerpa-ugly red algae tank.
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