microbubbles

[miztahphong2]

I HATE MICROBUBBLES! lets start off there. how can i decrease them? im trying some things right now but i would like to hear other suggestions. my cpr150 overflow takes water down to my sump and even through 3 baffles i still get micro bubbles in my tank from my sump. sump is a 20gallon long 30" tank. i have a foam filter block in one of the baffles and i added the foam filter onto the mag 9.5 that came with it. still i have microbubbles in my tank. they just really take away from the beauty of my aquarium. HELP ME! IM DESPERATE!

[jamesnmandy]

i modded my skimmer (although i have a very different setup than you) and use the thin sheets of polyester batting material found in any Walmart or craft store used to stuff pillows and such, cut two pieces just big enough to wrap around the output back into the tank, secured with a plastic wire strap and it nearly eliminated the microbubbles

only drawback is it needs to be removed about once a week to clean well or else it will cause too much backpressure and cause the skimmer water level to rise too high and will also start to clog with debris that the skimmer doesn't catch, grow algae, etc.....

but really, it's cheap, simple, and effective as long as you clean/replace it once a week

[samson78945]

hmmm sometimes when that happens to me it just means that the salinity is slightly high..just try a fresh water top off and see if that helps!! hope i did some good :)

[davidryder]

Can you post some pics? Mag drives sometimes comes with this black foam pre-filter material. If you place this in front of your pump intake it will remove most of the bubbles. Also putting a stack of small live rock rubble under the tank drain will turn the small tiny bubbles into larger bubbles making the pop faster. If none of that works you're just going to have to lower the flow through your sump. You shouldn't have more than 3-5x more than the volume of your tank flowing through the sump per hour.