Protein Skimmer Opinions

ReefHog10

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Baseline:
32 gallon cube, 15 mos old, lots of rock. Mixed corals - mostly softies, LPS and a few birdsnest corals. 5 small fish, various snails/hermits/urchins and ~ 1.5 in sand bed being constantly turned over by conch and diamond goby. Run fleece filter pad changed weekly, chemipure, biopellets and some matrix in the remaining back chamber that’s been there since the tank was started. Coralife UV sterilizer btwn return pump and display outlet. 5 gallon water change thus far every 1-2 weeks as time allows. Feed once daily, either pellets/flake or frozen mysis. Usually do reef roids once weekly. Nitrates (tested weekly) consistently run 10-12 and Phosphates always 0.03-0.05 on Hannah checkers. (Interestingly enough, these never really change whether it’s only been 1 week or 2 btwn water changes). Tank mostly stays clean / steady with a small amount of filamentous and turf algae and fine algae film on rocks - nothing really grows much or gets out of hand as of now.

Here’s the Question:
I was given a tunze nano protein skimmer for Christmas but I’m not totally sure I even need it? I may add a Blenny in the next few months to pick at fine algae film and of course corals will grow (hopefully) but no other changes planned. Thoughts on installing skimmer or leaving well enough alone?
 

Natural_Reefer

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I used to have a Biocube 34gal and tried multiple small skimmer and none of them worked that well. Too finicky and barely pulled anything out. As I started to collect more fishes and corals, I ended up adding an external flow and pump to run a real skimmer.
That being said, you are probably better off doing water changes regularly and not overfeeding instead of using any small/nano skimmer.
 

MNFish

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I have not used that skimmer but it seems to have good reviews. I think a lot of nano skimmer are now and in the past have been more effort than value. I have a 13.5 gallon never had a skimmer been running for for over 2 years and is pretty bullet proof. There is nothing at this point that would convince me I needed to add a skimmer to it. Seems like your reef is running how you want it so if I was you I would skip the hassle...
 
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