new protien skimmer question,helppp!

shutterbugg69

New Member
ok guys we went today and bought a prism protein skimmer and hubby need to know where the bubbles are supose to stop? at the o ring below or above or what?????help please!!!!!!!!!
 

beth

Administrator
Staff member
Right at the 0-ring is supposed to be the target. Prizm takes a bit of adjusting and few days to break-in.
I'm going to move your thread over the Equiptment Forum.
 

j21kickster

Active Member
Im sorry to hear that you chose that skimmer, it works but not well and gets noisy over time. You almost have to keep the valve completly closed to get high quality foam- it it is on full it will be a low quality watery foam.
 

shutterbugg69

New Member
well........i guess we all learn somehwere huh???? And i asure you a hard lesson we have learnd well!!!!!!!weve lost 5 fish in last 3 days........and its lookin like our tang might be next.........all we can do is keep doing what were doing and hope for the best........and if all die then well start over and hope weve learned something................I just feel so bad that i couldnt save them and they depend on me to keep them alive!!!!!!
 

shutterbugg69

New Member
Hey sorry.........i had been posting about this in the sick fish catagory.Well we have had our tank for over a yr now.Never had anything wrong never had a fish to die,til now.
55 gallon tank
30 lbs or so of live rock
1 yellow tang(still alive but looks sick)
1 blue damsel(still alive,acts like all is good in his world)
1 yellow tail damsel(presumed dead, never found him)
1 domino(dead)
1 clown(died this morning)
1 blenny(still alive but always is hiding)
1 bi color angel(had him 2 months, 1st to die)
1 not sure what he was.sold as a honey damsel but got bigger than the tang,length of your hand,he looked liked a victorian scally.......died)
1 striped damsel was last thing to go in about 3 weeks ago,..and we thing this is where we screwed up.........(died)..........................
1 scarlett crab
a few brittle stars
We have always bought our fish from kermitts reef in memphis they qt their fish for 3 weeks before putting them in community tank to sell........and that i guess is why we never had any problems.We bought the strped here at our lfs and so use to putting them in forgot we should have qt it first.first of last week we noticed they were covered with little white salt looking spots,...ick so we asked advice here and were told to lower salt lever so we did that for a few days and they then started to die............but they were just so covered , we think it was to late.
we didnt have a protein skimmer and sunday we made a trip to memphis,tenn. to kermitts reef(we live 2 hrs away in arkansas)
to see what they could tell us...soo we bought a bottle of kick ick a protein skimmer..and were switching the bottom from crushed coral to caribsea aragonite.when he had started cleaning the bottom he found brissle worms and the guy said if we change over that it would keep it somewhat cleaner and we can later on get the i forget what they are but they scoop up the sand in their mouth and eat bacteria out it then spits it out the gill....lol great discription....so thats what he has been doing last few days a little at a time.............we have learned that our tank was full of what we thought was good alge but wasnt........we had red stringy stuff in it and red spongy stuff covering the rocks.....
our water levels were: all ok til last week......
ph was 0.9 last week,..did a 50% water change then it was too low
it was 7.4 then 7.7 now its 0.8
nitrites was 0.3 now 0
amonia0
temp 76
salt level good
we have a canister box filtering system
3 power heads
protein skimmer.....
thats about it hope this helps some what!!!!!!!!!!thanks
jenny
 

j21kickster

Active Member
Well, i dont know where to start
what do you mean your ph was .9? and if it was 7.6??? that probably killed the fish right there. even 8.0 is low. you want it around 8.2-8.4. you need to know what you are doing before you jump into hyposalinity (lowering salt levels) how low did you bring it down to? I would do it over a period of at least 7days did you do it all at once? you shouldnt do hypo if you have inverts. also when doing hypo you must use a buffer to keep the ph at good levels lowering the salt level also lowers the ph. and also that is too many fish to keep in a 55gal, especially when all the fish are full size. read my signature and listen to it well
 
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