Skim buildup and skimmer placement help

[waddi05]

My Aquac Remora does a great job in pulling skim out of my tank, but it does an equally good job putting microbubbles back into the tank! I decided to place my remora in my sump/fuge in hopes that the microbubbles would be gone. It worked now half of my tank has this cloudy skim on the surface. It is so thick, not even the powerhead can clean it up. This is my first year in the hobby and I am still learning a lot, can somebody please help me out? Thanks.

 

[jhale]

Hi,
can we have a few more specs on your tank, the size and equipment.
I'm wondering how much flow is going through the tank and sump. you might need some more surface agitation to get the film off the water.

J

 

[waddi05]

The tank is a 55 gallon all glass aquarium with a 10 gallon sump/fuge. I have an eheim 2213 with 2 filter pads for mechanical filtration. The water is pulled from the tank into the canister filter, then dumped into the sump/fuge and finally bought back into the main display. I have about a total tank flow rate with all powerheads included, about 850 gph. I have 2 maxi jet 900's rated at 230 gph on the top corners of the tank for surface agitation and one maxi jet 600 rated at 190 on the bottom right for mid level agitation. Livestock is pretty light for now I have a blue hippo, yellow tang, 4 green chromis's, 1 yellow tail damsel and about 5 corals and snails/crabs/2 cleaner shrimps. The aquac remora is being pumped with a maxi jet 1200 pump.

 

[jhale]

so if i understand right there's not an overflow to skim the water off the surface. the water is being collected below the surface?

if that's the case then you might want to get a surface collector for the canister filter. eheim makes one, here.

 

[Deanos]

Waddi: Like Jon said, you need some sort of surface skimmer. You can either ditch the canister filter for an U-tube style overflow or get

made by Fluval/Hagen.

Dean

 

[waddi05]

Its not that easy, the weird part of this sludge is that its on only half of the surface! The side where I used to put the HOT skimmer, has a thick skim over it. The other half is crsytal clear, I tried to take pictures, but they didn't come out right. The only thing I can think of is getting the pre skimmer module for the remora. Maybe this should help.

 

[Deanos]

Leave the Remora in the sump. If half the tank is covered, something, probably your powerheads are probably pushing the skim to one side of the tank. The skim, like oil, will try to spread itself evenly across the surface.

 

[waddi05]

Deanos, I dont understand. . .Are you saying that the skim will eventually cover all of the surface? Should I play around with powerhead placement?

 

[Deanos]

I don't believe the powerheads alone will remove the skim, unless the water's surface is being broken (will result in massive salt creep). Right now, it sounds like the skim is accumulating away from the pressure of the powerheads. I'd bet that if you turn off those powerheads, the entire surface will be covered in seconds.

 

[marrone]

Try taking a small brine shrimp net and go over the surface of the water and remove the skim. Next see if it comes back. If it doesn't come back then something go introduce into the tank when you move the skimmer. If it does came back they you need to find the source.

Also you should move sure that your power head are not just moving the water around the tank but creating water breakage on the surface, that will help remove any slim on the water surface.

Also are you using sand in the bottom of the tank. Alot of the time the sand will give off a film into the tank if you didn't rise it off before placing it in the tank.

 

[glipper69]

like they said above, you need some sort of surface cleaner.

Frank

[ July 14, 2005, 11:58 PM: Message edited by: glipper69 ]