Dang coralife skimmer

[frogz]

My tank has been running for about 3 weeks the coarlife skimmer
has been working great till this morning. I woke up and checked to see if i needed any top off water and noticed my skimmer collection cup was full and overflowing. It was comming out of the hole in the lid at a pretty good rate thank god the skimmer was in my sump or it would have drained my tank. I have read on here that people have had this problem before. What has everyone done that has had this problem? Its skimming perfect now .

 

[earlybird]

Normally the air hose is clogged with salt or below water level. I'm glad mine is in sump too.
I can't get mine to dry skim. I've got about 1/4 of the cup filled with wet skimmate but it comes over the cone as foam? I tried dialing down the bubbles but haven't found the right medium.

 

[frogz]

I checked the air line and it was clear i will just keep a close eye on it and see what happens.

 

[cgrant]

I had this problem a couple of times on my ss220's, i found that if the intake of the pump gets too close to the water surface it goes nuts and overflows the cup, i am using a 2 gallon pretzel container to drain all the crud into that i got from costco.
I put the pump a little deeper down into the sump and it stopped doing it.
Skimmers are doing fine now.
Yes...I ate the pretzels!

 

[cyclops]

ALL you need to do is put the pump deeper in the water uasually 3" will be good but if your water starts to evaporate and the pump gets closer to the surfuce than you will have over flow. Did you add and chemicals to the Tank lately.

 

[frogz]

I didnt add anything to the tank and i made sure the sump water level was where it needed to be before i went to bed. The pump sits in at least 5 inches of water.

 

[stanlalee]

Originally Posted by frogz
I checked the air line and it was clear i will just keep a close eye on it and see what happens.
I believe the instructions say the pump must sit no more than 4" below the waterline. evaporation will not cause it to overflow. additional water will raise the level within the skimmer. less water will not.
its not the airline that gets clogged, its the strainer passage where the airline connects to the pump. you have to pull the strainer off the pump and the airline from the strainer. doesn't have to be completely clogged just restricted. this is the ONLY time mine overflows and I have raised and lowered the sump waterline an inch without major fluctuations in skimmer level (some but not enough change to overflow). the only other thing that causes overflowing is backpressure on the output tube. supposely that can be caused by the bubble diffuser but since the bottom of mine only sits 1/4 inch into the water and the tube only sits in far enough in it to not come out I have never had any backpressure issues.
If you want to see the affects of either all you have to do is a) put your finger over the airline intake line (same thing as restricted/clogged air intake or line) or b) take the output tube out the bubble diffuser and stick it a few inches under the water line (simulates backpressure such as with the bubble difuser not functioning properly). doing either will raise the water level or overflow the collection cup within seconds. the skimmer doesn't randomly overflow unpredictably without one of the two restrictions being the culprit.

 

[ineedhelp]

are u pleased with how it works i was thinking about buying one?

 

[frogz]

Mine skims very well.