Skimmer going crazy

[Scarfers]

So I'll try and make this as short as possible but about a week ago I did a major water change and this is a few days after stopping from vodka dosing. Everything was all well and dandy and I even removed my Emperor 400 as it was a source of nitrate buildup in my FOWLR. Nitrates went down A LOT. However I lost a fish in the process it was near the top of the surface with its head tilted up and swimming like it's blind. When I removed him from the tank I noticed there was a redish bulge from it's abdomen. The other fish were fine and are fine.

I noticed 2 days ago at the surface there is a white film or white dots floating. My Skimmer ever since the water change happened has been pulling skim out darker than anything I've ever seen any skimmer put out. It's a coralife super skimmer. I've had to clean it out twice today and the bottle that I have hooked up to the drain line literally filled up with the nastiest stuff I ever saw since I skimmed. It was literally black colored water.

I would like to know what in the world would cause the skimmer to skim this crazy and pull out this type of nasty stuff all of a sudden ????

Water parameters :

ammonia : 0
nitrite : 0
nitrates : 30
PH : 8.1
salinity : 1.025

Livestock : clownfish, marine betta, coral beauty angel and bunch of snails/hermits a starfish and a crab

thanks for any help much appreciated

 

[psujason]

I have heard this before in regards to this Skimmer as you need to "fine-tune" it. This is one of those skimmers that you have to continually adjust which will cause varying results.

What size tank do you have and which model of this skimmer?

 

[Turbovr3six]

Sounds like an algae bloom due to the vodka, or a spawning event. "white dots floating" sounds like a spawning. The white film and death of the single fish leads me to believe the vodka was introduced to fast(and too much). How much were you doseing to start and when you stopped? Total water volume?

I don't think it has anything to do with adjusting the skimmer. If that was an issue, the skimate would look more clear rather than dark. If it's pulling out nasty skimate constantly then it's either too small for the system, or there is something going on with the water.

 

[Scarfers]

it's a 55g FOWLR I'd say total water volume is prob. around 48g just a close estimate as I have about 70 pounds of LR. When I started dosing I started at .2ml for 3 days then .5ml for 4 days then next week I started on 1ml a day then 3rd week 1.5ml stopped the 3rd week then did a water change. I did however dose Prime after the water change 3 times the recommended dose because sometimes my water tends to have some chlorine in it although it's nitrate free.

it's the coralife 65 ... i'd like to add though that I think there is something going on in the water and as a safety precaution I added some matrix carbon and will be setting up a 10g sump and adding cheato

 

[Belwell]

I had the coralife 65 once, they are very very tempermental animals.

 

[Scarfers]

for the money I think it's the best skimmer in the 90-120 sub range I was however eyeing a turboflotor skimmer but was out of my league in terms of cost as I have other things to worry about still I'm moderately stocked so lol