Wet or Dry

[bikerman]

Can anyone tell me the diffrence between wet & dry skimming & if any which is best.

[justin00]

wet skimming is lighter and pulls more water out of the tank where dry doesn't pull as much water or as much bad stuff.

[Octoshark]

So the foam. This is the foam that forms at the surface of the bubble chamber and rises up the throat towards the collection cup. In a badly set skimmer, foam rises very rapidly in the throat and dribbles nearly continuously into the collection cup. The foam can be seen to collapse immediately or nearly so. The skimmate collected is weak in colour and thin. The cause of this is usually the bubble setting, where the amount of bubbles being produced is too high. This is the so-called wet foam.

At the other end, the foam may not rise very much at all, but when any gets into the collection cup it is thick and dark. The foam can be seen to be stiff, and is very slow to collapse. In this case, the setting is not far from being correct. This is the so-called dry foam.

The general ideal is where the settings produce many bubbles, but the foam does not get into the collection cup all the time. The foam may rise up the throat only to fall back when the rise begins again, and it is stiff and not too quick to collapse. When dissolved organics are present, the foam rises and enters the collection cup readily. It is dark, thick and can be smelly.