AlmostGosu 1 Report post Posted October 18, 2020 Hello all, I've recently moved and am looking to re-use equipment from my reef tank for aquaponics. I've thoroughly cleaned the equipment I'm planning to re-use with vinegar / bleach / muriatic acid as required and left outside after rinsing for a couple months to make sure there aren't any remnants from the saltwater setup. I'm curious if I could replace the solid waste export portion of my aquaponic system. I've got a skimmer that's rated for 525GPH flow and is able to drain waste externally (hopefully so I don't have to collect sludge). It is a Skimz Monster SM202 external protein skimmer. This is my first aquaponic tank so if I'm missing something obvious please let me know. I'm in the early planning stages of my build and trying to pull together a bill of materials. Thank you 1 saba58329 reacted to this Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
phri 183 Report post Posted January 3 I know my reaction is a bit late, but a saltwater skimmer is not going to do much in a freshwater aquaponic system. The surface tension of the salt water enables the formation of the fine bubbles which makes skimmers work so well. There are some commercial freshwater skimmers but I am not to impressed of their performance. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AlmostGosu 1 Report post Posted January 30 On 1/3/2021 at 6:30 PM, phri said: I know my reaction is a bit late, but a saltwater skimmer is not going to do much in a freshwater aquaponic system. The surface tension of the salt water enables the formation of the fine bubbles which makes skimmers work so well. There are some commercial freshwater skimmers but I am not to impressed of their performance. Thank you! I came to that conclusion a bit ago and didn't realize I had the thread open. Thanks so much for the response and I feel stupid for not thinking of that because I broke the skimmer in on super salty dirty water when I set the reef tank up originally -_- Thanks again, Chris Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bigdaddy 231 Report post Posted January 31 Hi, AlmostGostu and welcome by the way, Never feel stupid about asking questions here, that's why we have this forum. I didn't answer your post because I don't know much about protein skimmers and saltwater aquaria so I leave the answers to people who do. Except to confirm, we wouldn't need that in our backyard fresh water systems. Feel free to start a thread of your own in the build section and post some pics of your set up. Cheers. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
