Why is my skimmer going nuts?

[andestang]

You see the water level in the neck going up and down and you can also hear it from the pump.

[jason604]

Originally Posted by andestang

You see the water level in the neck going up and down and you can also hear it from the pump.

Mine was doing that. Goes up down n super hard to fine tune. Even adjusting the tuner by a hair line will cause huge fluctuations in skimmer lvl. Found out that my pump was not in straight it was a lil crooked. It now doesn't fluctuate by tuning it is so hard. Is this normal for vertex IN series? Litterly 1 hair turns makes it either g half way down in bubbles or super overflowing

[jason604]

ok this skimmer is rly stressing me out.. it literally takes only 1 hairline of a turn for it to overfill like mad or bubbles to drop all the way down. when i do find the perfect spot it will work great for like 5-8 hrs then when i come back to look at it the bubbles drop all the way down again... what am i doing wrong? i raised the skimmer another 1' so its at 7" of water now and i have to tune it to nearly a fully closed air tuner for it to have bubbles near the top of the neck which i normally have for my other tank

[e46er]

Originally Posted by jason604

ok this skimmer is rly stressing me out.. it literally takes only 1 hairline of a turn for it to overfill like mad or bubbles to drop all the way down. when i do find the perfect spot it will work great for like 5-8 hrs then when i come back to look at it the bubbles drop all the way down again... what am i doing wrong? i raised the skimmer another 1' so its at 7" of water now and i have to tune it to nearly a fully closed air tuner for it to have bubbles near the top of the neck which i normally have for my other tank

mine does that i also have a vertex in180 its in 8" of water.
I get about an inch in the container over a week or so but the smallest turn and it overflows in 20 min.
I have a small bioload so i figured it was fairly normal since the 8" is the reccomended height IIRC but im sure I didnt guess when I made my stand for it.
so if i run it in say 6" of water you guys are saying I should have a easier time finding the sweet spot?

[e46er]

i also had the orignal pump crap out a few months ago and am now using a sicce psk1000

[jason604]

yea i thought vertex in-180s r good skimmers.. im rly having doubts mybe i should switch b4 my system is in full action

[jason604]

Originally Posted by e46er

i also had the orignal pump crap out a few months ago and am now using a sicce psk1000

So I did some research n it seems like almost everyone who had this skimmer had this problem. But the problem is not with the skimmer design itself but with the cheap chinese pump that comes stock with it. A lot of ppl says the bubble blaster 3000 works great with the skimmer but a new bubble blaster cost more than what I paid for the whole skimmer n pump so I dunno. So the sicce is having the same problem with with ur original pump as well?

[e46er]

It pulls more gunk out now that with the original pump probably double. But I have 6 fish biggest one is a 3-4" so boiload is Small