Does an ATS remove DOC

[Floyd R Turbo]

People do know. They just choose to ignore it and leave the blinders on.

Things will change. There's just no ignoring the facts. It will just take time.

There is a concept that is used with regards to changing the opinion of a group with a particular belief. I believe it is something like when 10-12% of those people change their belief and are 100% confident in their new paradigm, then the rest of the group inevitably will change their belief as well. This is a concept I read/heard about w/r to resistance movements against governments, I think it was recently and about Libya or Egypt. The tipping point in the public belief was reached, and change from that point was inevitable. The same concept applies to almost every aspect of life, and hinges upon a 100% dedication to a belief. Skimmers developed their following and there became such a group of believers, which is why it is considered by the 'majority' to be one of the necessary pieces of equipment.

[kerry]

Thats a great read, and its in pretty simple terms.
SM!!! This post should be put into a sticky with a good name to describe it!!!!

[SantaMonica]

10-12% of those people change their belief

Actually, working in promotion, you find out that it works a bit different than this. If you control the 10%, but the competitor controls the 90%, they will win because 9 out of 10 people will say "seems like everyone is doing...".

The actual trick is to get your percentage over 50, so that people say "seems like more people are now saying...". The problem from day one has been, however, that neither algae nor DOC has a promotion budget. So nothing good about DOC or algae will be promoted, but everything "bad" (untrue) about DOC or algae WILL be promoted... by the competitor. This is the reason that people appear "brainwashed"; you can only believe what's been told to you.

[leebee]

It’s funny, 20 + years ago when I got into marine fish keeping no one really used protein skimmers. Sure, I did see them in shops, but didn’t see any need for one, FW tanks don’t use them, and they work fine( maybe it’s the plants they keep). Thinking about it now I don’t remember having any trouble keeping my tank in quite good condition. No cyanobacteria( didn’t even know what that was back then), no hair algae, no bryopsis, etc. So what has happened? Reading forums, it would seem that there is an endless amount of trouble in reef keeping. So what are we doing wrong? Not many people were keeping coral back then, just a few displays in aquarium shops and at expos. All I did was change about a quarter of the water every 6 weeks and that was it, with tap water! So, is it possible that we over clean our tanks now(skimming), should we just let things work themselves out as far as the biology is concerned?
It has been mentioned before that public aquariums use large protein skimmers and ozone to keep their display clean. I guess they have a reason for this. My head hurts now.

[SantaMonica]

Because they don't have scrubbers.

[Ace25]

The reason you don't see them used in FW is because skimmers do not work in freshwater. They need the salt in order to create micro bubbles. I tried it once.. if you put a skimmer on a FW tank and it just makes large bubbles and won't work properly.

I think the "let the tank find its own natural balance" is the best method to running a reef tank. I feel the current methods you see on sites like RC encourage you to "make your own artificial balance" in order to maintain a tank, and while it can work as well as a natural method, it requires TONS more work and money and you end up playing mad scientist every day with your tank. I did that method for many years, to the point I was just about to toss in the towel because it was really getting to be overwhelming to me... then about that time Santa Monica started spamming all the forums, and getting a lot of crap for it. Even I didn't really believe an ATS could work as good as he said.

I spoke to someone who I thought was super knowledgeable, he is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to anything SW, can name anything in its real scientific name, and he gave me the standard BS line of "ya, that was a failed method in the 80's, you just end up with a worse tank and yellow water" and I initially believed him, but with Santa Monica's persistence with showing successful tanks using an ATS, I finally seen enough to believe it could work good and the person I trusted really didn't know what he was talking about in regards to an ATS. Since I was feeling so overwhelmed and this method seemed to be exactly what I was looking for, I took the plunge, and never looked back. I promoted the ATS so much my local forum banned me because they considered it "snake oil". If you didn't use a skimmer, and a good one at that, then you will fail and have no business on the local site because it goes against everything the admin/mods believe. No loss for me, my tank speaks volumes to me and anyone who sees them. I don't promote the ATS nearly as much as I initially did, but if someone asks me what filtration I use on my tanks, I just open the doors to the sump and show them what is in them, 2 pumps (return pump and ATS pump), small bag of purigen, and a heater with some PVC and a plastic screen. On my tanks, I still believe I need to use purigen, but that is a tank by tank decision. Many people can get by without using carbon or purigen, I feel I am not one of those people, but the small cost of a bottle of purigen is negligible and last a long time since you can recharge it.

[leebee]

My question to you, after reading these 4 articles below, what makes you think a Skimmer would do anything helpful, like remove excess bacteria? In the last article they prove even with carbon dosing a skimmer can NOT remove the majority of bacteria (just not possible to attach to bubbles to be removed).

I read through this last article, and extracted this part.



Overall, the major conclusions from these water column bacteria removal experiments are
1.GAC (Granular Activated Carbon) filtration does not remove bacteria from the water column.
2.Protein skimming (bubbles) removes approximately 30 - 40% of the bacteria in the water column of carbon-treated or organic rich water, but the remainder is not susceptible to bubble-based removal.
3.Steady state bacteria populations in skimmed reef tank water are not subject to further skimmer-based bacteria removal - there is a baseline value that the skimmer will not go below.


So I take from this that skimming is usefull to a point. But then the ocean doesn't have a skimmer(maybe surf).
Oh, for what it's worth, I hate having a skimmer, it's a total pain.

[leebee]

The reason you don't see them used in FW is because skimmers do not work in freshwater. They need the salt in order to create micro bubbles. I tried it once.. if you put a skimmer on a FW tank and it just makes large bubbles and won't work properly.

Obviously I know that skimmers don’t work in FW, I was just trying to make the point that FW tanks function fine without one, and why can’t SW tanks do the same.

[Ace25]

Now add this to what they are saying.

30-40% of bacteria is skimmable, meaning it has the correct hydrophilic properties required to be removed via bubble fraction. Here is the big white elephant in the room, there are both good and bad types of bacteria, a good reef tank always wants to have the majority of the bacteria to be the good type. If you can sustain a greater ratio of good to bad bacteria, the natural population cycles of the bacteria will keep each other in check, the majority will always reproduce more to sustain a majority balance. How do we know that the 30-40% of the bacteria being skimmed is not the good type and you are then skewing the ratio in favor of the bad type to multiply in the tank and wreak havoc.

The answer is, we don't know. So if we don't actually know if we are helping or harming our tank by removing stuff via skimming, then why do it? Why not let the tank find its own natural balance instead, it will make the entire reef tank keeping experience much more peaceful and stable overall. Sure, there are certain scenarios where a skimmer can help, like an accidental extreme overfeeding, but if that happened it would actually be cheaper to do a 100% water change to fix that issue than it is to buy a skimmer for those super rare occasions.

[Ace25]

Obviously I know that skimmers don’t work in FW, I was just trying to make the point that FW tanks function fine without one, and why can’t SW tanks do the same.

LOL, ok.. I wasn't sure. At one point in my life I had no idea and gave an old HOB skimmer to a friend with a FW tank, that was when I learned they didn't work in FW.