Reef Devil Skimmer & Micro-bubbles

[bama man]

I have this skimmer in my sump, It is only a two part sump. I have the water coming into it from the DT which is being filtered with bio-balls. The second part of the sump has the return pump, the skimmer pump and return, and of course rhe skimmer itself. I started out with the valve completely opened as per instructions. The directions say to close the valve 1/4 turn incrementally until there is 1/4 - 1/2 " of foam in the tube. But the problem is the skimmer is filling up with water and a little skimmate in a short time ( 1-2 hours, if that long). That is one problem I am having with it. The second problem is that the skimmer is causing micro bubbles to enter the DT like crazy. I know it is the skimmer causing it because I can turn it off and the water clears right up. The sump is crowded, I have the return on the bottom and the return from the skimmer is resting on top of the return pump filter. Does anyone have a reef devil or have any ideas to fix these two issues?

 

[mrdonkeyazz]

My skimmer was doing that to until i put a filter sock on the skimmer outlet pipe. That eliminated all the micro bubbles in mine. I also had to shorten the tube on my skimmer pump to bring it closer to the surface because i was not getting enough bubbles in the skim chamber.

 

[bama man]

Thanks for the advice. I have fixed both of the problems. After re-reading the instructions I found that I had put the mini bioballs in the wrong tube. After I changed them and put them in the downdraft tube where they belong, the filling up of the collection cup with water stopped. Hooray!!! I re-positioned the outlet from the skimmer and added some more water to the sump and the micro-bubbles also stopped.

 

[jonrn]

good for you. i have the exact set up and skimmer as yours but im still on the battle with those microbubbles. i have it for 8 mos now and i really didnt like the performance. the only thing that kinda helped with the microbubbles is placing a filter sock on the skimmer return, i dont use it a lot coz i just cant position the sock poperly. like yours , my return pump is just underneath my skimmer return. so all the bubbles get sucked into the DT. ive been thinking a lot on how to modify my sump but it seems hard(unless i just change the whole sump). is there a way that you can post a photo of your setup?

 

[bama man]

What I did that stopped the micro bubbles was I took the skimmer return off and twisted the piping on the valve so that I could have the skimmer return emptying to the opposite direction,(away from the main return pump). Then I added more water, enough that the skimmer return sticks above the water only about a half inch or so. I did that last night and when I came in this evening from work there was still no more micro-bubbles. Before I made these two changes I just tried puttting a filter sock over the skimmer return( over the sponge) and that didn't change anything. I did notice about an hour ago that I did have a couple more bursts of micros to come out of the return into the DT. I am going to play with it some more tomorrow. It may only be an issue of closing the skimmer return valve slightly to cut down on the skimmer return a little. It's still open all the way right now. The collection cup was about half full of foam when I came in, so my correction on the bio-ball placement fixed the cup filling up with water problem. I can't do a picture yet sorry, but if you want to PM me I will be glad to discuss this further tomorrow after work.