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Skimmer problems.

I have had 5 protein skimmers over the years. 1 coralife, 2 bubble magus and 2 reef octopus. The one I currently have is is a new reef octopus 110sss. It’s been running for a week. I have never gotten any of the skimmers to work properly. The water level Has been recommended levels for the skimmers. I have also played around with spacers to fine tune the level. I keep making tiny adjustments every day, with 24 hours to let it settle in. I either Flood the cup with sea water, or nothing at all. I cannot produce the foam head on top. The bubbles always break down inside the tube. I’m about to pull it, and go skimmerless. It’s been almost 3 years of spending money, and having one in my sump that doing little to nothing.
 

njtiger24 aquariums

Officer Emeritus
Article Contributor
Sounds like you may not be allowing them to break in correctly. All skimmers have a break in period. My suggestion is I would get your current skimmer going to the point where is not over filling the cup and just level it alone
 

diana a

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
let it run. Did you over size it? Which skimmer and what size is the DT?
 
I’ve had these things on for over a year. Appropriately sized for the system. I turned it back down, and will leave it break in longer. Most have reported this skimmer needs minimum break in, going by consumer reviews.
 
How much bio load? I’m thinking your skimming very wet to get the cup to over flow. I have a hob reef octopus with dual pumps and and dual cups. Took bout a week to get right with cup height. Pulls something nasty stuff. Really this hob skimmer is meant for a 200 gal tank and I’m only about 45 gal after the tank with rock.
 
Not much bioload. 7 small fish. I’m trying to skim as dry as possible. Just won’t skim at all. If I turn it up a tiny bit, It skims way to wet. I’m making tiny adjustments and waiting a day or so for it to settle in between. I’ve been insucessful with skimmers for years.
 
I think I found the problem. I just checked my tank, and somehow I’m only at 0.022 sg. I routinely mix to .024. I don’t know how it happens. I will slowly bring up my salinity up the next few days. Will see if the skimmer works better.
 
funny i had similar history and using a 110 too. It was an unpredictable pita in the sump, then eventually I tried porting one of the drain straight into it and has been working perfectly in that config ever since. I'm not running any other filtration anymore except for a fuge; so it gets some exercise
 
Thx. Ill keep tuning it for another week or 2. I’m getting fed up with skimmers. They just don’t seem to work for me.
 
I’m not sure I got this set up right. When I turn the adjustment to min, the water level goes up. When I rotate toward max, the water level goes down. Seems backwards.
 
Yea. I’m feeding rather lightly while I try to get residual nitrates down. My nitrates were 40 after my cycle. The water changes I’ve done have brought them down to 25 so far. I think your right Mark. Between light feeding and aggressive water changes, I just don’t have enough waist in the water to build up the foam yet.
 
I think 7 fish in 50G is considerable bioload. Might want to scale back on the water changes to give the other things a chance to kick in
 
Yea. There mostly small bodied fish, except the clowns. I’m about we’re I want to be with fish/bioload. I will, ease up on the water changes when I get my nitrates down. There was a tiny bit of skimmate in the cup this morning. It must have done a little something overnight.
 
After all the trouble with the skimmer, I changed the filter sock 2 days ago. It immediately started building proper foam for the first time ever. It’s been working perfectly for 48 hours. There was absolutely no surface tension before to form foam.
 
Glad you figured it out, I had a similar issue which was because I couldnt keep the water level to stay at the proper level until I built a sump. Any idea why the filter sock caused it?
 
No idea. Before I swapped it it would just make bubbles, but no foam. It was very touchy, and there was a fine line between not skimming at all, and overfowing. Now I can adjust to skim dry. I can skim wet without overflowing. It seems to be working properly. It was immediately better when I put the new sock in.
 
Hm thats weird, when I first got into this I used to mess with the skimmer just about every day and couldnt get it to work until I just let it be and now it works great.
 
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