I recently got a call from a local college regarding their skimmer, the person maintaining the tank wasn't sure it was working properly. It was an Oceanic 75 reef, lightly stocked, with an ATS. The skimmer in question was an amiricle cc that hadn't had the skimmer cup emptied in 1.5 years. The airstone was only extended 1" into the water column
. So essentially the ATS was the only mechanical filtration. Although the tank was mediocre, what struck me was the health of three organisms. A green open brain that was easily 12" across, an anemone I couldn't identify that had moved to directly under the surge and looked great, and a flame scallop that was absolutely gorgeous. The scallop had been in the tank when the current caretaker took over the tank 1.5 years ago!! I have to suspect the ATS had something to do with the scallops health in spite of their known difficulty.
fwiw,
Agu