Need help with our Red Sea Prizm Skimmer.

[leona]

Now before I get started I know I could get a better skimmer. But The next time we get a skimmer I want it to be the best so we will have to save up for it. Our first skimmer was a vesi-jet we upgraded to the red sea prizm deluxe from advice from the LFS. We had told him that we had oil like stuff always ontop of our water. So he said we needed a better skimmer. At the time we could not afford it but didn't want to hurt our fish so we got the prizm skimmer deluxe.
Anyway.
I know about fine tuning it everyday or so. That's not the problem. We always have small amount of bubbles coming back into the tank. Is that ok?
We have the cup on and not the end adapter. IF someone has one (prizm) what do they use the cup or the adapter?
It never looks like water is going into the cup but I guess it is cause bubbles are coming out.
We will be getting power heads this weekend to help with the slime stuff on top of water.
Shouldn't this skimmer be skimming on the top or in the water.
Protein builds ontop of water not in the water correct that's what I thought I read. So that's why we kept the cup so it would skim the top . Is that also the reason because I'm not skimming wright that my water always looks like there's sand floating around.......Very lightly but still there.
We have had our LS for about 1 month and the blenny's and other guys can go around and not kick up any sand unless they bury themselves. It's my biggest pet peave.
I just don't understand why it skims then it doesn't.
If anyone has a red sea skimmer and can help me I would really appreciate it.
Leona
P.S. I've been looking at other skimmers what does everyone else have? So we know how much to save up for.

 

[petem]

Hmmm...Interesting..I read about this "oil" like film in another post on this forum, but dont remember the answers. Have you tried doing a search on the New hobbyists forum? with Oily film, and skimmer. I have the smaller red sea prism. It works fine, with the size tank I have. It's noisy, but, then again, I've gotten used to it.

 

[leona]

we are going to try adding a surface skimmer to our fluval unit to see if that will help.
thanks for the reply

 

[spline9]

Just break up the water surface. Aim a powerhead (or the fluval outtake) towards it and make some ripples. An airstone also works. You just basically need the stuff stirred up to get it off the surface.
The surface skimmer for the skimmer is to grab the upper 1" of water (protein concentrates on the upper layer of water), but it doesnt seem to clean the actual surface of the water. The best thing for this would probably be an overflow box but thats a whole different story.

 

[crm13]

Hi, Leona. I have a canister filter as well that I use for particle removal and carbon when I run it. It also provides great water flow. I got that surface skimmer attachment also, and it works really well at helping to reduce that surface film. What I did is place a powerhead at one back corner of the tank, pointed at the surface just enough to get the water kind of rolling on the surface and place that surface skimmer attachment at the other back corner of the tank. The surface skimmer attachment also has a control piece on it that allows you do vary how much water to take from the top and how much you want to take from the bottom of the intake. That combination almost entirely eliminated surface film altogether. You'll just have to mess with that adjustment so that you get a decent flow in at the top. The only problem you may run into with setting it too strong on the surface is that if your protein skimmer does in fact release bubbles back into the tank, the bubbles will tend to collect in the surface skimmer attachment intake and eventually go through your canister filter and out the output which is both noisy and can create a mess in terms of salt creep. Like I said just adjust it so that it is working well, but not too much, and the bubble won't get taken into the filter. I think that it's a good investment for under 10 bucks. Just remember to clean your sponges in your canister more often because you will notice they get dirty much quicker from sucking some of that scum off the top. HTH.

 

[leona]

Originally posted by crm13
Hi, Leona. I have a canister filter as well that I use for particle removal and carbon when I run it. It also provides great water flow. I got that surface skimmer attachment also, and it works really well at helping to reduce that surface film. What I did is place a powerhead at one back corner of the tank, pointed at the surface just enough to get the water kind of rolling on the surface and place that surface skimmer attachment at the other back corner of the tank. The surface skimmer attachment also has a control piece on it that allows you do vary how much water to take from the top and how much you want to take from the bottom of the intake. That combination almost entirely eliminated surface film altogether. You'll just have to mess with that adjustment so that you get a decent flow in at the top. The only problem you may run into with setting it too strong on the surface is that if your protein skimmer does in fact release bubbles back into the tank, the bubbles will tend to collect in the surface skimmer attachment intake and eventually go through your canister filter and out the output which is both noisy and can create a mess in terms of salt creep. Like I said just adjust it so that it is working well, but not too much, and the bubble won't get taken into the filter. I think that it's a good investment for under 10 bucks. Just remember to clean your sponges in your canister more often because you will notice they get dirty much quicker from sucking some of that scum off the top. HTH.
Thanks,
We did get the skimmer and it works FABO...... We have a Fluval canister. Yes we did have to adjust to make sure not to much air got into the skimmer but we had it set now for 2 days and the top of our water is clear as a button. We also just changed the prizm skimmer top surface for in the tank skimmer instead we decided we didn't need to have both on top one on top and one on the bottom would be fine. Since we dont' really have a big bio load because our fish are in our QT for another week. Thanks for the advise though. That was reallllllllllly bugging me.
Leona