Skimmer Question

[VERVE]

Quick question guys, my skimmer runs day and night, and it runs on a external blue line pump which tends to get warm and tends to make the chiller run more often than I would like (I'm trying to conserve energy here) will it be a bad choice to turn off the skimmer at 10pm and turn it back on at 5am to run continuosly until the the following night.
Thx for the feedback.

[deano488]

the problem is skimmers usually take a little while to "Warm up" it will be inneffective for the first few hours that it is turned on

[cschweitzer]

I would definitely say leave the skimmer on continuosly. One solution would be to get a skimmer with an external pump(intakes water through a tube, then pushes the the water into the skimmer). One thing to make sure is to clean your pump regularly to make sure debris is not sticking in the motor which can push the motor harder and give off heat. I think it would probibly even be better to use a smaller pump continuosly ove a larger pump for periods of the day. These would be my solutions to the issue of heat generated by a pump, but these are just educated guesses. I hope my little knowledge could help you in some way.

[waterfaller1]

Skimmers help to oxygenate the water..I would'nt turn it off.

[smpolyp]

#1 reason to keep it on at that time would be the ox level as stated above. By turning it off on the tanks night hours would lower the ox and lower the pH. You would end up with a bigger pH swing as pH is normally higher in the day due to algae producing ox and raising the pH during the light hours.

[VERVE]

Thx got my answers then ......
You guys are great