Help -Skimmer Overflowing Constantly

[DiverDude]

A couple of days ago I changed my filter sock. Doing so usually makes my skimmer go nuts (fill quickly with clean water) for a few minutes and this time was no different -except that it's pretty much kept going nuts for almost 2 days now.

I did a 15% water change and changed the filter sock again this morning in case something had got into the water but it's just as bad now if not worse.

I've shut it down because I'm tired of listening to it gurgle on a full (clean) collection cup.

Any thoughts on what could be causing this ?

[bignose]

are you feeding you corals? some coral food makes skimmers overflow.

[DiverDude]

I dose Coral Snow more or less daily but I've been doing that for months and the skimmer's been fine.

[Seamazter]

Chances are it was something on your hands, or you changed the air/water setting.
If your skimmer lets you, this i do often at the skimmer as work if they overflow.
Is set your collection cup on the edge and allow half the water to flow over top the skimmer and half into the collection tube.
I do this on super skimmers and eshopps and my euroreef here at home when i dose my tank something that sets it off.

If you cant do that just keep dumping what it does pull out, sooner or later, usually the later, it gets the gunk out that caused the overflow.

[DiverDude]

Well, nothing is impossible but I always wash my hands and rinse well before the hands go in the tank. I have a Bubble Magus BMQQ (http://www.fish-street.com/bubble_ma...rotein_skimmer) and I adjust the air level by raising or lowering the entire skimmer body -and I have it as high as I can (dry).

[Skimmerking]

why is your skimmer going nuts I WILL TELL YOU MINE DOES IT its the soap that you are using. don't use soap to clean the socks and phosphates do leach back in hot water and vinegar.

[Cal_stir]

if you are using bleach you should soak your socks in a chlorine neutralizer like aquasafe for 24 hrs, then allow them to dry before use

[DiverDude]

Interesting you should say that. This last load of socks I ran, I watched more closely in the machine and I saw suds -not a lot but some.

These days, I'm collecting dirty socks in a bucket of water with and ounce or so of bleach. When I have enough of them, I run a load -with NO soap or bleach and a second rinse cycle.

On top of that, I've now started soaking the clean socks in (tap) water for a day and then drying them before use. We'll see how that goes.

So overall, my socks were definatley adding something to the water but the principal problem with the skimmer was the clogged sponges.

2 more lessons learned.

[Cal_stir]

i don't know how your tap water is teated in calgary, but here our tap water is treated with chlorine so i soak my socks in aquasafe just to be safe

[DiverDude]

I could use RO I suppose -just seems like a waste. I'd like to think that the chlorine content of tap water would be low enough that the amount that could be transferred from a sock to the water would be immeasurable.