Need some advice for poor-skimming HOT overflow

[novahobbies]

Hey! I'm cleaning my seahorse tank today, and I'm getting frustrated with the hang-on-back overflow. It's a Tom Aquatics Rapids Pro filter, and the overflow portion has the return jet built into the overflow unit. This is nice for convenience, but I always wonder if the return jet isn't ruining the effectiveness of the overflow. The surface skimming on this thing has never been that great, and lately it's just gone to the dogs.
Does anyone have any experience with adjusting HOB overflows? Should I raise the in-tank portion so it has less chance to suction from deeper in the tank......or should I drop it lower....? I have always had a little skin of schmutz on the surface of the water, but lately I've even developed a algae bloom that floats on the top...almost like duckweed, but not that bad. Any info would be very greatly appreciated!

 

[snakeblitz33]

Quote:
Originally Posted by novahobbies http:///t/393286/need-some-advice-for-poor-skimming-hot-overflow#post_3497663
Hey! I'm cleaning my seahorse tank today, and I'm getting frustrated with the hang-on-back overflow. It's a Tom Aquatics Rapids Pro filter, and the overflow portion has the return jet built into the overflow unit. This is nice for convenience, but I always wonder if the return jet isn't ruining the effectiveness of the overflow. The surface skimming on this thing has never been that great, and lately it's just gone to the dogs.
Does anyone have any experience with adjusting HOB overflows? Should I raise the in-tank portion so it has less chance to suction from deeper in the tank......or should I drop it lower....? I have always had a little skin of schmutz on the surface of the water, but lately I've even developed a algae bloom that floats on the top...almost like duckweed, but not that bad. Any info would be very greatly appreciated!
Adjusting the overflow up or down won't cause the surface skim to go away,... what would need to happen is the return plumbing needs to be pointing straight down into the tank, and then a powerhead needs to blow across the water towards the overflow... that should keep it from building up excess algae and proteins.

 

[novahobbies]

Thnks Seth...yeah, I just learned that from trial and error. I've never really played with the HOB overflow before more than what it takes to clean it, so this was new stuff to me. I learned that if I raise the overflow, I just raise the water level in the tank. I had a few tense moments when the water level was starting to creep up higher than usual.
Hmm. So now I have the option of putting a powerhead in a obvious and sort of ugly spot in the tank, or.......
What do you think of this. I have a powerhead in the tank that I use to push water out and through the skimmer. I could replace this with a subcurrent internal wet/dry filter and modify the outflow so it pumps filtered (surface skimmed) water to the chiller. Not sure if this is a worthy idea, or if it would be better to buy a tunze nano filter that looks like it fits onto the skimmer somehow.

 

[snakeblitz33]