Thoughts on over skimming

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by fishytime

Just a thought but, I noticed in your pic that you have a relatively large leather mixed in there....I noticed quite an improvement will all my remaining corals after I removed all my leathers (xenia and toadstool) and started running a carbon reactor....I wouldnt think of doing a mixed reef without running carbon to help absorb any toxins that may be being released. Im not positive if the improvement was due to an increase in available nutrients or a decrease in "chemical warfare"

The pic in this thread is a previous setup, I just used it as an example to show healthy LPS in high nutrients. I don't currently have any leather corals or much for soft corals at all. I'm going to start thinking about building a sump soon so I can filter the water properly including carbon.

[fishytime]

Oops.....ok never mind then....I'll shut up now

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by fishytime

Oops.....ok never mind then....I'll shut up now

Haha come one, it's all about the gum ball effect, every bit of insight helps and is appreciated.

[Parker]

Out of curiousty, hows your skimmer running? Is it still producing a nice thick head of foam? Typically when you reach the point of over skimming the skimmer tends to produce less and less and can no longer maintain a thick head of foam and more or less starts to fizz. Fizz is the best way I can describe it.

I had the same issues with my BM250 on my 90 gallon. I started running it with one pump instead of two and it seemed to settle in.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by Parker

Out of curiousty, hows your skimmer running? Is it still producing a nice thick head of foam? Typically when you reach the point of over skimming the skimmer tends to produce less and less and can no longer maintain a thick head of foam and more or less starts to fizz. Fizz is the best way I can describe it.

I had the same issues with my BM250 on my 90 gallon. I started running it with one pump instead of two and it seemed to settle in.

It's off and on, sometimes it's foamy and sometimes it's just "fizzing". By fizzing I mean the water level in the skimmer is the same but there is no foam build up in the neck, rather the air bubbles just fizz about an inch or two above the water level. It takes a few weeks to a month to full the collection cup, on my previous setup it would only take a week.

By similar problems do you mean just the fizzing or problems with corals as well?

[StirCrazy]

I just reviewed your tank thread, what kinda water flow do you have in the main tank? I noticed you had a seahorse which I had forgot about.. can they handle high flow or do you have to keep it fairly low for them?

guess what I am trying to figure out is how much water per hour is actualy getting to the sump?

oh and are you running the balling setup yet?

Steve

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

I just reviewed your tank thread, what kinda water flow do you have in the main tank? I noticed you had a seahorse which I had forgot about.. can they handle high flow or do you have to keep it fairly low for them?

guess what I am trying to figure out is how much water per hour is actualy getting to the sump?

oh and are you running the balling setup yet?

Steve

I have 1000 GPH through the sump, plus two Tunze 6101 power heads which I believe are currently on 30-80% sine waves during the day and 30% constant at night. The seahorse doesn't come out during the day very often, likely because of the higher flow but all flow is shut off during feeding so the seahorse doesn't have any issues eating and the flow cuts back in the evening so the seahorse gets a couple hours of light and low flow to swim around. He seems well adapted to the system.

No balling yet, just water changes and a little Kalk seems to do fine for now.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by sphelps

It's off and on, sometimes it's foamy and sometimes it's just "fizzing". By fizzing I mean the water level in the skimmer is the same but there is no foam build up in the neck, rather the air bubbles just fizz about an inch or two above the water level. It takes a few weeks to a month to full the collection cup, on my previous setup it would only take a week.

By similar problems do you mean just the fizzing or problems with corals as well?

I had zero growth out of softies and LPS, SPS had slow growth. Skimmer would just sit there and fizz. I dropped my skimmer down to one pump and everything seemed to be improving when I lost my light timer while on holidays and the tank went without light for a few weeks. So I'm unable to confirm whether the improvement would have continued.

The 90 gallon was very low tech, maintained with skimmer and water changes only,plus a tad bit of cal. dosing

[sphelps]

Well I have an update but it's not good

All I changed was the skimmer which was set to a 0.5 duty cycle (12am to 12pm). Sunday night was fine and no problems where presented but last night proved different. I never checked the tank this morning so I'm not sure when this went down but I can home from work today to find that the skimmer had overflowed, it was off by the time I got home but the sump was still foamy and the skimmer cup was full of clear water. I emptied the collection cup Sunday and virtually nothing was in the skimmer on Monday so I don't think a lot of skimmate was dumped in the tank.

The bad part of this story is that virtually all my fish are dead, including my seahorse and lionfish which I've had for close to 20 months. All corals, clams and other inverts seem the same. Overall the tank looks normal, I'm going to test amonia and nitrite right away but I'm guessing these will be normal.

Skimmer is back on regular full duty cycle but I'm completely clueless what happened. This is likely the last straw for me and this hobby at this time, obviously I don't have the proper time and patience to spend on it right now and I just can't handle the extra stress. More than likely everything will be up for sale soon enough but if you have any ideas on what happened please still share them because I would still like to know.

[golf nut]

I have no answer as to what happened, it is however an engineering thing and I am sure you will both figure it out and not give up.

Hang in there.