The group of Ranunculous that was behind the wood must have realised I had plans to replace it with a fast growing stem, so when I woke up this morning, that plant had made a bid for freedom and was floating around the surface! I split it in to two pieces and replanted a piece with each of my two other groups, leaving that space free for a fast growing stem to go in and shade my Anubias. Would still appreciate suggestions on the Hygrophila if anyone has any please?
I'd be interested to see how much of a difference the skimmer makes to your flow. I'm toying with the idea of getting one too.
Tonight I have installed the skimmer and gone through a few placements before settling on one for now. Initially I put it on the side glass at the back right corner and turned it up to max, but because the unit is so small, the outlet was higher than was really any use for getting water down behind the bogwood. I therefore switched it to the back glass and had it working in the same direction as my spraybar to boost flow on the right hand side, in theory hoping that it would push more water back along the substrate at the right hand side which would ultimately go behind the bogwood. This didn't work as the only place I could put it due to the spray bar meant that the outflow just hit the glass inlet pipe and flow was diverted. I therefore conceded that for it to be any use getting more flow behind the wood it was going to have to go on the left hand side of the tank. I'm not overly happy with this as that is the side you see when you enter the room, but it's doing a job, so I will go with it for now. I also added about an inch and a half of 12\16 hose on to the outlet, pushing it on more at the bottom than the top, so it angles the flow downwards towards my stems. Set to max it seems to push water about half way across the tank and then the flow seems to merge with the water from the circular motion of the spraybar and go upwards. It's better than nothing at getting some flow behind the wood, I saw a piece of plant that I had trimmed get pushed down behind the wood, slow down, but ultimately pass right behind the wood, probably being sucked by the inlet as well at the far side. When it reached the right hand side it hit the flow coming the other way and went back behind the wood. Flow should therefore be a bit better than before, the DC down there looks like being yellow this evening, although hard to accurately read with the tannins in the water.
As for skimming capabilities it is very good, it cleared the film from my tank in about 10 minutes! If you just wanted it for skimming alone you could run it on a timer for fairly short periods I guess. It does seem to create some bubbles, but I think that most of these are from CO2 bubbles that get sucked in from the surface and the pushed out in to the tank again, so it may well be helping with CO2 distribution, it should certainly be taking CO2 rich water from the surface and pushing it down in to the tank, but could also be adding some oxygen from the surface I suppose.
It seems I was hasty yesterday in thinking all my stems were done for. Although I have removed a couple today, the remaining ones although showing some melted leaves have all put out new growth today, so fingers crossed what is left is going to bounce back. The stems I have in the propagator have all got fresh growth on too, so will be transferring some more of those in to the tank at the weekend.
I don't have much confidence with the Monte Carlo, again it has put out new growth at the end of the plant, but the bottom of it is just melting. I'll see how that pans out over the next few days.