skimmer or no

[chrisdamage]

STAY AWAY FROM FISSION NANO SKIMMER... that thing is worthless! haha... honestly, frequent water changes are going to be the best thing for you... weekly is better than bi-weekly

[combiemaster]

i have a 5g desk with about 10 pounds of CC and 10 pounds of LR with lots off zoos and a hob filter with a sponge. i do a water change every month and just do top off only no skimmer.

[kyrie_eleison]

I don't have one on my 10 gal. or my 5 gal. Not only is there no room but no need for one. My 5 gal. has no fish; hence no real bioload. My 10 gal. reef has only two small fish (blue damsel and a tomato clown) and a bunch of corals. All I do with that tank...take two cup fulls of old water out ever 3 days (used to be two days) and replace it with two cups of new water.

For small tanks...you're wasting your time with a skimmer; easier and probably cheaper to just change 10% every so often.

[Sndwave80]

Go with a skimmer!

[criscat777]

I run a ASM3 with a sedra 9000 pump on my 125gal.
The only reason my daughter's 15gal. nano dose not have a skimmer is because we cant find anything that will fit it with out having to cut of a piece of the top and it would ruin the clean look of the tank. So she dose 25% water change every week to keep the fish and coral happy

[fishkeeper101]

run AC(activated carbon). It will remove the same things as a skimmer and more.

[Chris2500dk]

Tunze DOC 9002

[Orient Master]

just replumbed mine back into my system.

during the last move of my tank so that i could drill the back the skimmer had to be taken down so that i could clean the inside and took me a few days because i didn't devote my time properly to the skimmer. plus in the new setup i have a 25 gallon rubber maid serving as my sump right now. Just put the clean skimmer into the sump and had to retap the waste cup with air hose. this time superglued it. it wont be moving around any more. thats for sure.

[DarthOcellaris]

Real interesting thread

[vitamin sea]

you dont need a skimmer if you do weeky water changes

[YLChik]

the 10 gallon fo does not
but the 29 gallon seahorse tank has a sump and i run a css 65 and BOY am i glad I do!

[baum89]

well this is all very contradictory...
currently i have a 5g hex with no skimmer but i am tired of water changes
i want to dump the 5g into a "larger" 9 gallon bow front. i will now have room for a skimmer. is it really as much work as people say to run a skimmer?

[baum89]

i also dont want to break the bank...

[OIIIIIO]

I ran my 20g without one for years. When I bought a CSS65 for a new tank I was working on, I figured I'd test it on the 20g and couldn't believe how much clearer the water was after a few hours of skimming. I never built the new tank so I just skim every few weeks and take it back off the system.

[Nyles]

My 24 ran skimmerless for a year, it was runniing fine, in an attemp to just make things simpler I ran across a skimmer and added it. I would not go skimmerless on a nano again. The tunze 9002 seem to be a good choice.