Skimmer losing foam..... what is going on?!
 

Hi everyone.. I have a Bubble Magus Curve 9 in a 150G w\ 40B sump that has been running for almost three months now... Until last Saturday, the skimmer has never lost foam for feedings, maintenance, anything... it's been a champ...

Last Saturday, it starting losing foam whenever I fed. It came back hours later, but it would lose it..... I had no idea what may have happened, but the only thing I can think of is I was using some bleach in the kitchen cleaning the counters way earlier that day. I washed my hands often throughout the day and only replaced an algae sheet for my tangs that afternoon...

So nothing in my tank has had issues.. not fish, coral, not even my Gigantea which would be the most sensitive.. I skimmed wet for the last week and thought my problems were solved last night. I fed, and it didn't lose any foam.... thought it was fixed.

This evening, I fed, it lost foam... 30 minutes later it came back, then randomly 30 minutes later it dropped again.

So... did that little bit of bleach residue from my cleaning last Saturday kill whatever broke in the skimmer? Will it come back? Anyone ever had this happen before? Literally nothing else in the tank is having issues other than the skimmer...

Any insight is appreciated as I have never seen this before.

Definately can affect the slime coat in the skimmer body. Give it some more time before you panic. Have you checked the pump intake for calcium build up?

That was my thought originally.. the fact it had foam, then lost it randomly was confusing... It's cranking now and I'm going to leave it skimming a little wetter overnight just to get out whatever it's been missing today and who knows how long.... Hopefully it picks up and breaks in rather quickly..

Heck, this is a good excuse to have my Wife do the bleaching upstairs :-)

Mine drops down whenever I feed frozen foods (especially mysis shrimp). Not too bad with flakes or pellets.

It just lost foam again back to the middle of the neck on the cone.... what the heck...

I'm tempted to just do a big water change this weekend just to pull some of whatever this is out of the system. it hasn't lost foam this often before though, so maybe it is just breaking in again.

+1

Have you checked the pinwheel for any obstructions, doesn't take much. Any aerosols or room freshners added lately?

Mine will do this for while every time I feed fresh, frozen, or gel. It never does it with dried food. Something you are doing changed and occam's razor suggest that if it is happening when you feed, it is the food and not the bleach. What is likely is that something about the food changed.

I submerge the end of the air line to the skimmer pump in a cup of hot RO/DI water, the water will get drawn into the air line and volute and clear any salt buildup.


I do this once a week as preventive maintenance


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Nothing new added... nothing... that's why this is so puzzling to me.

Well there are times it doesn't happen in any correlation to feeding. Like last night, it just decided to lose foam once it just built it back up, so I'm not quite sure... it's puzzling.

I have not done this, but might just try it this weekend.. Just came downstairs and looks like it's skimming away with a nice thick foam now.

One of the reasons I switched away from needlewheel skimmers is the amount of maintenance required for the pumps and airline. If you can setup a regular schedule for taking them apart and cleaning them, it will make a huge difference.

Yea.. I haven't even had it for 3 months which is the frustrating part... I really do think the bleach residue might have something to do with it, I have never had a problem for the entire time so far, and have been feeding the exact same food.

I would say, at least with the ones I had, monthly would be a good cleaning schedule. By 3 months the difference begins to get noticeable. Cleaning the rotor in vinegar is also a good idea for calcium deposits.

Or, you could swap skimmers with this guy; he seems to have the opposite problem:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2265512
:)

Well the first while I had it, this beast produced some nasty stuff, so might be time to unplug and give it a clean.

Will using vinegar and cleaning stuff out cause the slime coat to go away and then it has to break back in again?

I would just clean the pump with the vinegar and not the entire skimmer, but some people do and you would need to break in the skimmer again. There isn't much of a benefit to this on the rest of the skimmer unless you were trying to get rid of coraline.

Thanks, I will have to pull the whole darn thing out to clean the pump with vinegar... but I will do that this weekend. Right now it's skimming and doing decent, so I will let it do what it's doing.

It had a real nice foam on it, I fed regular food like I have for the last three months, and it just slowly lost foam again... what the heck...

Might try to clean the pump today, but I have to completely remove the darn skimmer, rip out the pump and soak the pump... Wonder what is going on.

I just got fed up, pulled it out, cleaned it, cleaned the pump in vinegar, and let everything dry... It's back in the tank and at my normal setting looks like bubbles are much smaller and climbing much better...

We'll see... on the negative side it kicked up some sand that was sitting in my sump, so now it has to all settle again.

The random foam thing is interesting. Is it also possible that the skimmer has finally "caught up" to your system? I've heard of larger skimmers producing a lot when first introduced to an under-skimmed system, but then slowing down once the system levels out.

Is it possible that you are getting some sort of stop-and-go effect where the skimmer runs short of proteins required for effective skimming, and during the "downtime" the proteins build up enough to cause the skimmer to go crazy again?

Could very well be... The one thing I noticed though was originally my skimmer was just move bubbles up the cone so quickly and none popped on their way up until they got to the cup. When all of this started happening and it lost it's foam the bubbles wouldn't make it up the neck into the cup area...

After a cleaning today, it's back to normal... I'm wondering if there was just something that got on the pump, neck, cup, something.. the airline that caused this whackiness to happen... Whatever happened, it's now producing nice nasty bubbles at the top of the cup.... I love this skimmer, it is a champ. Certainly over sized for my tank, but I have a decent bio load and feed heavier than heck.

+1.....Mine catches up with the system load from time to time. You can check your pump performance with an air flow meter. My pump pulls about 15lpm of air when running at it's best, if it drops below that I know to look for problems. Really easy and accurate way to check performance.

That's good info... can you post a link to the air flow meter you use? I did a quick google search, but it returned units that don't look to be compatible with tubing.

Here is a link to Reef Dynamics where I bought my skimmer and air flow meter, if it doesn't work just go to Reef Dynamics web site and look under parts & accessories. I bought the 1-25 lpm model but it would depend on your pump as to which one you need.

http://www.reefdynamics.com/category-s/163.htm

It has been running since I cleaned it just fine, and even when I fed about 30 minutes ago, no drop. It just dropped now a bit because I fed my Gig a piece of Salmon soaked in Selcon but that is to be expected..

If all is good like I think it is, should pick back up again shortly..... We'll find out here soon but I think that it's all good.

good to hear!

Happy Reefing!

Yea... it only lost foam once the Selcon went in there which I understand is normal.. It's still not normal, but should be within an hour or two.

Foam came back within about an hour and rocking like a champ...

:thumbsup:

So I came down at like 3AM when I had to let the dogs out... and the foam was rocking.. Came down at lights on around 8AM and foam has been down since then so I took the opportunity to feed selcon soaked food..

I really do think that the skimmer might just have nothing to do in the tank. It got a tea colored nasty bunch of stuff out overnight and then just dropped... I told that to my Wife this morning and she said, "So you're telling me we need more fish"....

I like the way she thinks!

I have a NAC9 on my 105 and it goes up and down. Sometimes it's skimming like crazy, sometimes it does nothing. Just make sure you keep the neck clean at the top, on mine the part the cup attaches to the skimmer body, where the foam would overflow into the cup, builds up thick layers of skimmate and affects the performance of the foaming going into the cup. I've never cleaned the pumps, well, because the skimmer is stuck in the stand/sump.

The frustrating thing is, there are little patches of cyan on my rock now recently, so I really feel this darn thing just isn't working right... I'm going to test for phosphate here shortly, but every other parameter is zero....

Here is a picture of what the darn thing looks like, the bubbles don't even make it to the top of the cone! I'm going to run out to the LFS and the foam better be back by the time I get back.. that is plenty of time for the Selcon to work through the entire system.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...s512/photo.jpg

If I set the valve to minimum and shoot the maximum amount of bubbles through, the head gets to about half way up the collection cup and moves some stuff up....

Even weirder... it skimmed all yesterday and overnight, then in the morning I wake up and the foam head is gone. I didn't touch anything, but went out for a few hours, came back and there was some skimmate in the cup........ Has this skimmer really caught up to my system?!

I think you are probably seeing a correctly sized skimmer do its thing. Skimmers that are undersized will continue skimming forever and never catch up.

There is a way to keep it skimming pretty much none stop, start dosing carbon (very lightly). It will skim out things you never knew you had.

Let's agree and run with your answer... which I'm starting to think might be the case..

Why would it start working after when I turn the bubbles all the way up, get out and let drain the top part of the head, and then turn it back to my normal setting and it works again? Wouldn't that suggest there being something in the system that is not allowing it to work normally?

When I was adjusting my skimmer it did this same thing, it will die down again. Most likely the extra flow into the skimmer pulled enough something with it to skim. Btw, it had to the same affect, I had adjusted it too high for the same reason you did and when it kicked in again, it pulled out a gallon in about 5 minutes. I put it back and haven't moved it since.