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Another notable change which follows from the use of strong protein skimming is the need to replace chemical elements that are removed from the water more rapidly than under normal circumstances. The greater the efficiency of the skimmer, the more pollutants are removed but, beneficial elements are removed as well. There is no way one can avoid this as should be self-evident.
Hobbyists were quick to pick up on this and now replenish these additives more frequently and use more "complete" additives than in the past. The chemicals and compounds that are removed faster by strong protein skimming include, but are not limited to: iodine, strontium, selenium, lithium, barium, pigments and amino acids. There are quite a few others but these seem to be the main ones.
Drip systems are the most efficient manner of adding chemicals to your aquarium and to keep all of these in solution in a much more constant concentration. Although many hobbyists still add them manually, peristaltic dosing pumps offer a simple method of doing so in an automated manner and ensure stable concentrations of these compounds at all times at all times.
The latter is important as the more stable the water chemistry remains, the less stress the fishes and invertebrates are subjected to. Stress leads to disease and other aquarium problems; avoiding stress is thus a very desirable state every hobbyist should strive to attain at all cost.
Whereas in the past protein skimmers were used as accessories to more inclusive filtration systems, they have now become the main filtration used on the aquarium. This is a major shift in focus and a development that is likely to increase as hobbyists discover the benefits of the Berlin and Live Sand Method and its reliance on live rock and live sand for water purification, the natural way.
Why natural? Simply because on the reef itself a lot of the local water purification is achieved in the same manner, notwithstanding the constant supply of "new" ocean water.
Dead rock on the reef is not common and, if dead rock is present it does not remain dead for very long, but is overgrown and populated by numerous animals in a relatively short span of time.
This rock, which is what hobbyists now call "live rock", performs the same action on the reef as it does in the aquarium, namely purification of small amounts of water that are not washed out or replaced by new ocean water because these water layers are, in essence, trapped within the rock itself. If this purification were not taking place, the rock would soon foul and whatever organisms were living on it would die. This is not happening for the reasons explained earlier.
To ensure that your live rock performs at it should you need to set your system up in such a manner that you have a lot of laminar current inside the aquarium. Turn-overs through the filters are one thing (and maybe a thing of the past). Current inside the aquarium is what keeps the live rock (and the live sand) in a real healthy condition. Current in this context should be understood to be turbulence inside the aquarium.
Very much the same applies to the sand we use (or the mix that we call sand) as it too contains many organisms that greatly assist in the purification of the water in our aquariums.
Protein Skimming is very important to ensure good water quality, at least still at this stage, since nothing has been introduced, lately, that would replace it adequately.
As long as no new technology comes about that would be able to accomplish the same result, we will see in my opinion, more new designs in Foam Fractionation.
Really ponder the skimming of your aquarium with the seriousness it deserves. You are likely to become convinced that you can greatly improve on the manner it is performed now by taking the comments made in this article into consideration.
As a last note, if you are not running a skimmer, you should! No salt water or reef tank should, at this point in time, be ran without a skimmer. At least not until other methods are found to purify the water in a similar and preferably better manner.
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