Skimmer help please...

[alexknight]

If you just started your skimmer its going to pull out a lot of junk, so you may have to empty a lot more now then you will have to down the road. also you may be running the skimmer to wet you will have to play with the air mixture into you get it just right. on my 60 gallon tank I empty the cup every 3 days and its real nasty black and thick.

 

[rcreations]

How dark is the stuff collecting in the cup? If it's not a dark brown, you have it set too high.

 

[sean48183]

Like Aknight said you will have to play around with it to get the right combo of flow and air and should help with microbubbles. With the skimmers output going directly into the tank though it will be tough to not get some bubbles in your tank.

 

[rcreations]

Oh, I didn't see that you have the output going right in your tank. In that case you'll always have micro bubbles. Every skimmer makes micro bubbles to a certain extent. That's why they're usually placed in a sump.

 

[jennln]

Not dark brown.....more like a dark yellow light brown color. I'll try adjusting and see what I can do. Yeah I didn't realize how many extras I was going to need when I made my initial purchases and the sump is just not big enough for everything I've got going on in there. I wanted to pick up something larger from my lfs when I went to get the skimmer but they didn't have anything bigger than what I've got in stock. I'm going to look around a bit today and see what I can find. I'd much rather have it in the sump than on the tank anyway - aside from asthetics, I have a few jumpers and this just isn't safe with any openings up top at all.

 

[jennln]

I managed to get the output hose to kind of hit the filters in the output at a slight angle and the amount of microbubbles going into the tank now is very minimal - way better than when it first started. My grouper seemed a bit freaked out by them so he's finally coming back out, but my picasso seems a bit disappointed they are gone....he was having a great time catching them lol.