skimmer just pumping out water...

[Reefer_man]

I got a call from my angry wife this morning saying that there was a wet spot on the carpet. I told her to just shut everythign off and i would be home soon to fix the problem. When I got home, I found my skimmer was producing too much foam. my overflow jug (half gallon sweet and sour mix jug) was overflowing. The water wasn't even thick. It was basically just water. I've been running this skimmer for 4 months now without any problems. It is a AquaClear 75 sump/skimmer combo. I cleaned it and started my syphon again and everything seemed fine, so I went back to work. I called her a few hours later to check on it and she said it was almost full again. So in 3 hours it poured a half gallon out of the tank into the overflow collection. I've never had more than an inch of skimmate in the jug at a time and that was when I neglected it for longer than I should have. Anyone have any thoughts what could be happening? Please help, it might save my marriage

 

[Anonymous]

Most skimmers have an adjustment you can make to get a very wet foam or a "dry" thick foam. Follow the directions that came with your skimmer. Some companies have a number you can call for trouble shooting. Good luck.

 

[Anonymous]

Have you changed anything?

 

[Reefer_man]

no i haven't changed anything. That's the weird part. The only adjustment is a little valve on the airline tubing. I have always run it with it all the way open. Before i went back to work this afternoon I adjusted it so it wasn't drawing in as much air. That still didn't work. Could my water be so fouled up that it would really produce that much skimate? I did have a nudibranch munching on my colt coral. I tried to save the coral by slicing him up into smaller frags. I did a 25% water change 2 weeks ago in a 60 gallon tank. I don't understand what is going on.

 

[Anonymous]

Did any of the colt frag die receicently? This is going to sound weird, but when I sealed my tile floors my skimmer when nuts for a week. Have you done any cleaning project near the tank?

 

[Reefer_man]

No i haven't really cleaned anything, and that's not somethign my wife really likes to do either I clean the outside of the glass occasionaly with some all purpose surface cleaner(only because i ran out of glass cleaner). Should I just let the skimmer go about spitting out that much water? and empty the container every 3 hours or so? Is the water really fouled up or is something wrong with the pressure/ flow of the siphon?

 

[Anonymous]

I'm not familiar with that type of skimmer so I have no other suggestion than to watch your SG carefully! With that much water being pulled out it's liable to raise your SG.

 

[Anonymous]

Every now and then my skimmer's will do the same thing. Usually after a day, it corrects it's self and all is normal. Don't have a clue as to why they do it tho.

 

[garagebrian]

Every now and then my skimmer's will do the same thing. Usually after a day, it corrects it's self and all is normal. Don't have a clue as to why they do it tho.

I read somewhere on RC that changes in weather can cause changes in the level of the water in the skimmer(pressure changes caused by storm fronts). That would explain the one day and corrected. But multiple days would be something else.

B.

 

[Reefer_man]

that's very interesting theory on the weather changes. I live in Indianapolis and we did have a front come in thrusday and the temperature dropped like 20 degrees. It is operated like normal now. Thanks for the commets. I'll let you know if it acts up again.