ETSS reef devil skimmer -- what's going on in my sump?

[krullulon]

hello! uber-newbie here so please forgive any dumb questions.

long ago i had a 40g reef that was much much fun... but college and apartment life aren't good for things that shouldn't move every six months.

so, very long hiatus ensues...

and now i'm older and own a house -- whoo hoo! assuming things go well, this sucker will be here for a long time.

the tank setup: 90g acrylic, 30g under-tank sump, iwaki wmd30rlxt (main return, water enters tank through bottom-running spraybar and overflows to top left box and into sump), ETSS super reef devil skimmer with catalina CA1800 pump (both in sump), pacific coast CL-280 chiller with a GEN-X pump (draws water from and returns it to sump), in-sump heater, and 2 powerheads in the tank for additional current.

the moment-in-time of the cycle: i've had 120lbs of marshall island uncured live rock in the tank for 2 weeks and my levels are about zero across the board as of today. no more house smelling like sea sewage, whoo!

the conundrum: until yesterday, my skimmer was producing lotsa nice gunk. when i put the genx chiller pump in the sump, the skimmer stopped making gunk -- no more nice yellowish organic foam. i've been fairly careful about what's going where in the sump -- the skimmer's pump draws water right next to the overflow return so it's getting primarily upper-tank water... the water exits the skimmer right next to the chiller pump intake... and the chiller returns the chilled water right at the intake for the iwaki so it can go back to the main tank. i was very pleased with myself for lining everything up so neatly... but i'm easy to please.

i'm not sure if the skimmer is no longer making foam because my levels are zero and there's just not enough gunk right now, or if adding yet another pump to the sump has done some bad voodoo like mess with the surface tension of the water to the point that the reef devil just can't whip it up enough to get the ick out of solution. nothing else has changed other than the additional pump -- sump water level is the same, skimmer pump is outputting at the same rate, valves are open the same. as of now i have the chiller and its pump turned off to see if the skimmer will start foaming again, but it's been a few hours and nuttin'.

apologies for the ramble, but i was curious if anyone could pick out any obvious bonehead moves above or if there are known sensitivities with ETSS reef devil skimmers that i'm not aware of (the documentation and information on the ETSS site is a bit sparse).

also -- are there any FAQs for minimizing noise? the iwaki is a bit louder than i was expecting, and i just read somewhere that i have the american-made model, which apparently is quite a bit noisier than the japanese model.

any suggestions appreciated. thanks!

jason

 

[Mihai]

Well, easy test: stop the chiller for a day and see if the skimmer starts to skim again. Since you don't have any $1000 fishes in the tank right now, nobody minds if you stop the chiller a bit.

Besides the pump it might be the temperature... ((????)). I'm not really good at skimming physics, but temperature changes many processes, so I would not be surprised if this is the case too.

While we're at the temperature point: things do decompose much faster in warm water and thus the skimmer has more stuff to get out: if your chiller is really good, it can considerable slow down decomposition.

Finally, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do that (as I'm not an admin here), but I'll do it anyway:

WELCOME to REEFS.ORG!

Mihai

 

[krullulon]

thanks! 12 hours after stopping the chiller, still no foam... well, there's foam, but it's just not doing much other than cleanly frothing.

so, i'm going to try a few experiments with surface tension (turning off some powerheads) and temp and such to see if i i can get a better handle on the variables.

i'm not in a rush so it's all good ^_^

 

[Mihai]

One more thing: skimmers like to be clean. After a skimmer gets dirty on the riser tube (about one week for mine) it dramatically decreases efficiency. Try to clean the tube (make sure that the venture is unclogged if you have one), wait 1/2 more day for the skimmer to get a bit dirty (it doesn't like it very clean either ) and see what happens. Also let us know.

Regards,
Mihai

 

[SaltyMist]

I'll take a stab at this too, and suggest that theres not enough to skim for it to really skim. It's already done it's job, and since your levels are at 0 now I would assume that the liverock is cured, and what was dead and dying off is now done doing so, and thus theres no longer any really large load on the system to skim out.

You can try and stick a jumbo shrimp (raw from the grocery store) or a couple of them in the case of your size tank and leave them there for say 45 minutes or so, and watch your skimmers reaction.

If it was anything like mine it'll start pounding out wet foam to the point where you may need to empty the cup of clear liquid. But what I believe this would show is that when there is somethign in the tank to skim, it will skim, if it stops, then theres too little to skim.

But hey, Im NO marine biologist or nuttin like dat!

 

[Baianotang]

Good Luck whith the new set up.

 

[krullulon]

Thanks everyone! The skimmer wasn't skimming with the chiller off either, so I plugged it back in with the intention of trying Salty's jumbo shrimp idea... and 30 minutes after plugging the chiller back in it was foaming like nobody's business, before I even got around to the shrimp.

*shrug* I'll keep hoping the skimmer gods smile upon me, or at least don't strike me down with their wrath.

Thanks again!

JP

 

[ChrisRD]

It's not unusual to see a disruption in your skimmer performance when plumbing something new into the system. Generally things will return to normal within a few hours to a few days...