now my tank is only a few months old and I have kept two small clownfish, 3 soft corals. Have the red sea rollermate 500, I wonder if the rollermate takes away absolutely everything so there is nothing for the protein skimmer to pull out?
The skimmer does nothing
- Thread starter klavmaister
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Without knowing how large the tank ultimately is, your bioload looks to be very low to extremely low which would result in your skimmer being unable to perform. In addition to that, the skimmer looks basically brand new so it will also need a break in period to function properly regardless of bioload (higher of course would help it generally perform better but doesn't mean I would recommend you buy a whole army of fish to "fix" your skimmer performance.)
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Agree with above. I have a deltec and it didn’t do much at all with small bioload of 2 clowns + corals. Once you add some more livestock it’ll be nice and brown. If you have a roller mat or similar running as well that will do a fair bit of the work too
I would turn the rollermat off, you are in danger of getting dinos, only 2 fish in a big tank, running a skimmer and a rollermat is not a good idea until you need them to remove nutrients, you really do not have enough nutrients in that tank to warrant such nutrient export methods yet…unless you are feeding crazy amounts of food, which would then be the issue and not the skimmer not working.
I personally would turn off the rollermat and consider keeping the skimmer on if you consistently get po4 reading of above 0.02, a skimmer helps with more than just removing nutrients, whereas a rollermat has too functions which it does extremely well, remove nutrients and keeps the water clear, but as said you really don’t need a rollermat with only 2 fish, you really don’t want dinos, get dinos and you will be praying for a tank full of algae.
You running any kind of algae grower. Refugium or scrubber? Even with the mat and scrubber you headin for algae trouble if you dont give algae or other undesirable stuff a place to grow.
Little feed and still over time nutrients will build up and you will be fighting all kinds of tank *****. Would suggest some kind of algae growing zone that aint your display
as mentioned already, i would just do away with the rollermat. you are wasting money on the material for something that you would be better of skimming out, or using some other form of washable filter, like a filter sock. at this point, your just wasting money on rolls that doesnt need to be wasted. once you get about 5 or more fish, then it might be worth having it, but until then, your setup is overkill
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