Needle wheel skimmer ? Big bubbles

[Sinistard]

I have a needle wheel skimmer and am having trouble with it producing large bubbles and I am not getting any kind of foam head. From what I can tell there is no reason for the large bubbles and I am stumped on what to do.

 

The skimmer uses 2 gx-4100 pumps and is plumbed to take water in from my overflow. I can't find anything wrong with the set up or the pumps and was wondering if there is anything that could be in the water causing the large bubbles?

 

The tank has been set up for around 3 weeks now with LR and I did not get much of a cycle due to the fact that my LR was from an existing tank so my water is probably fairly clean but I still would expect the skimmer to produce something. I have a few snails and hermits but no real bio load in the tank yet.

 

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions as to things to test please let me know.

[Gwoardnog]

Large bubbles typically mean you are introducing too much air. Another thing to check is whether the water height in the skimmer is where it should be and also the ghp outflow through the skimmer needs to be what it was designed for. So check the manual

[er1c_the_reefer]

is the skimmer new? new skimmers have a break in period before it starts performing properly.

 

is the skimmer old? check the needle wheel and clean it out; there maybe debris in it.

 

are the pumps used as recirculating or is it pumping water from the sump? if the skimmer is a recirculating skimmer, you do not want to feed too much water through the skimmer at once; there should be about 1x-1.5x the tank volume going through the skimmer per hour. if you're plumbing the entire overflow into the skimmer, that's probably too much; you may want to T it off.

 

did you prime the skimmer? after the skimmer is on, blow into the air intake. if the bubbles are big, pinch the intake a little and see if the bubbles get smaller. if that's the case you might want to put a muffler on the intake.

 

is the return from the skimmer set properly? check the gate valve or the sponge height to let the proper amount of water out to adjust the height of the foam head.

[skylsdale]

Hey Sinistard, check this thread out: http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8250 If you stick with it for a few pages, it ends up going into how to get the absolute most out of your skimmer.

[Mr. Fosi]

That link requires me to login.