Hi Richard

thanks for taking the time to reply

i do have a timer on my skimmer, and it is faulty (always resetting back to 00:00) and my experience of timers on the whole is that they cause me no end of problems ( 1 in the garage is also faulty) and the one in the house tripped out my electrics when on holiday... and the freezer defrosted !!

i have given up on timers lol, i just wished they were reliable.
we would all agree , feed small and often - and my Aquaforte gave me 8 feeds a day and it was small amounts. So there was usually some in the skimmer , (not much)