Rocks in Skimmer?

[ProdigalPoster]

Is it possible to put my ZEO rocks in my skimmer?

I'm using a beckett and I was curious to see if I could drop the rocks in the bottom of skimmer where the water flows out?

Its a 60gs total but theres somewhere near 1000gph going through the skimmer. Would those flow pose a problem?

Thanks

[scottw]

Is it possible to put my ZEO rocks in my skimmer?

I'm using a beckett and I was curious to see if I could drop the rocks in the bottom of skimmer where the water flows out?

Its a 60gs total but theres somewhere near 1000gph going through the skimmer. Would those flow pose a problem?

Thanks

I would say YES it will be a problem, remember you want 100/gph per liter of rocks so unless you have 10 liters of rock in there then no it will not work. Also how are you going to shake them up 2 times per day?

[ProdigalPoster]

Well I've read somewhere Aged Salt told someone they could put it in their remora because its not direct flow.

[G.Alexander]

I would not recommend it. You will get a lot of air in the stones “environment” so this will have a negative effect to the bacteria hosted on the zeolites.

G.Alexander

[scottw]

I would not recommend it. You will get a lot of air in the stones “environment” so this will have a negative effect to the bacteria hosted on the zeolites.

G.Alexander

Yeah what he said

[vance.110]

I've been thinking about going Zeo for some time now, but initial cost is a rough point for me. I don't mind the Chemicals, Bacteria whatever, its the hardware, but I may have come up with a solution if you guys think it would work. What about a small aquaclear hang on filter. I only have a 75 so it only needs to be able to hold .75L of the stones, and flow rates of the smaller filters is like 100 gph and if I put them in a mesh bag I could easily just grab the drawstrings and give it a shake. As long as I hid it in the sump so no one saw my $20 filter, so they didn't think a small inexspensive filter was causing miracles think it would work???
Thanks,
Bill

[ProdigalPoster]

I believe Tonkadawg is doing something similiar with a HOB filter.

[gqjeff]

Vance, the most important factor is flow through the stones. If you could set it up with a timer to have it go on/off 3 hr intervals and keep the stones covered in water I do not see why it wouldn't or couldn't work for you at all... Rem 100 gph for every liter of stones for flow...

Peace, jeff

[tonkadawg]

I've been thinking about going Zeo for some time now, but initial cost is a rough point for me. I don't mind the Chemicals, Bacteria whatever, its the hardware, but I may have come up with a solution if you guys think it would work. What about a small aquaclear hang on filter. I only have a 75 so it only needs to be able to hold .75L of the stones, and flow rates of the smaller filters is like 100 gph and if I put them in a mesh bag I could easily just grab the drawstrings and give it a shake. As long as I hid it in the sump so no one saw my $20 filter, so they didn't think a small inexspensive filter was causing miracles think it would work???
Thanks,
Bill

Bill, this is currently what I am doing on my 18. So far it is working well, but the big concern is that the stones have to remain covered in water when you are in your 'off cycle'.

In all honesty, I am going to be drilling my tank and adding a sump. When this happens, I will be doing away with the aquaclear and putting the stones in a traditional reactor. A couple of reasons I am doing this: right now, with the aquaclear, the flow is a guesstimate. I have a problem investing so much time and money into a hobby and then use my best guess with regard to a key component of a system such as stones. The other reason is that with this sort of set up, the flow is passing around the micro bag, not through them like you would have with a reactor - see Aged Salts reply when I asked this:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=488498

Again, this is ok, and it has worked for me up to now, but I think I could be cheating my tank of the full potential of Zeovit.

[tonkadawg]

Oh yeah and the other thing - I keep the rocks in a mesh bag - this has started to collect detritus and grow algea since it is at the surface of the water with a MH hanging over it. This sort of promotes things that zeo is trying to get rid of...

[Aged Salt]

Excellent point Matt, the zeolite-bag will collect nutrients which under MH turns into algae, similar to running my Tunze dirty--nutrients on the grill & output grid are fed by high flow thru the grill & grid, resulting in brown algae & diatoms being dispersed in the flow pathway. The point here is to keep the pumps clean, same with the stones, just clean them more often, say 3-4x's/day. Bob

[ProdigalPoster]

Bob,

Do you think its possible to put the stones in a skimmer as you recommended to another at one time?

[Aged Salt]

P-D, depends on the skimmer's effluent-micro-bubble formation. If one has a HOT skimmer where the bubbles are dispersed before the effluent, the bubbles will not prematurely clog the stones. If it a high flow skimmer[eg. Beckett type] where effluent is laden with bubbles, as Alexander mentioned in another thread, then it would exhaust the stones prematurely, resulting in nutrient increases, & coral color darkening. Bob