Stumped

[countrykat]

I am stumped on what is happening in my tank. Over the last few days I have been getting a film on top of my water. Today it is way more than yesterday. You can see the film sitting up against my overflow but when some goes in, some comes back out of the overflow in a different spot. It seems that there is not enough water agitation when it goes into the overflow. I have turned up my skimmer which appears to be working just fine. I have adjusted the overflow height and that does not help, the only thing that happens is my dt starts to fill up from the ump. I have a mechanicle sock on the overflow return and have removed that to see if it makes a difference. The only thing different over the last couple days is the addition of a bubble tip coral. That even appears to be doing very well. It opens up good when the lights are on and closes good when they go off.

[horwitzs]

IME the film is usually from organics in the water, but I'm surprised your skimmer is not pulling it out (or carbon if you have it).
Corals may shed some slime from the stress of moving, so if the water is testing fine I'd just give it a few days to see if it clears up since you did just make a change in the tank.

[Dustin1300]

What type of flow do you have to tank and what size tank is it? If you don't have enough flow then you may not be agitating the water enough.

[Ron Reefman]

How much flow do you have between the DT and the sump? That film should be getting sucked into the overflow and collected by the socks and/or skimmer. I have the same problem when I dial back the flow in my anemone tank. I have enough drainage to dial up the return pump to that tank and then the film runs right to the overflow and out of the tank. It sounds like you don't have enough drainage capacity if you dial up the pump and it raises the level in the DT? When you do that, does the level in the overflow box go up too?

[calbert0]

You could also point a power head upwards to help increase surface agitation...

Does the surface level of your display tank seem to sit still or is it constantly rippling?

[countrykat]

OK I figured something out!!!! Not sure what but here it is.


I have a mag 12 for my return pump on a 75 gal. I also have a Rena 4 canister. When I got home this morning from work the skim on top of the water was twice a thick as when I went to work yesterday. I also asked my son to clean out the Rena because I noticed it was blowing tiny air bubbles just before I left for work. I got home at 6 am and my heater was in the dt instead of the sump and my sump had about 3" of water in it. I am surprised the pump didn't burn up. Yes the Rena was leaking when he hooked back up. At least he took the heater out. I also think he added some water and salt mix because the equipment was laying on the stand. 11 years old and he took care of it!!

Anyway enough bragging about my boy.

Still not sure exactly what was wrong but I added a 3rd overflow siphon tube and the skim was gone in about 10 seconds None of my hoses are plugged and the tank did not overflow from not having enough water to feed the sump. It worked just fine a few days ago. Once I get everything cleaned back up I will have to start taring the filtration apart 1 piece at a time to figure what is going on. 30 minutes into it and the water is almost crystal clear. I will have to babysit my skimmer for a while because it is going nuts.

[Ron Reefman]

ckat, is it possible that one of your drain lines is just partialy blocked? I had a snail go down the drain that is a direct feed to my skimmer (I left the grill of the intake after a cleaning... my bad). Skimmer still worked, just not as well as it had. But water was still flowing down the line to feed the skimmer. I eventually pulled the top of the drainline off and poked a long dowel rod in the drainline. What do you know, blockage at the bulkhead! I had to hit it pretty hard to break the shell and water began to REALLY flow to the skimmer. I can't believe how much it's working now. But then for about 4-6 weeks it was hardly working at all.

[countrykat]

So far I have found nothing, even ran a brush through all the hoses. I thought about what you are saying and the 3rd siphon tube doesn't seem like it would have changed anything if a bulkhead hose was partially blocked. All seems to be doing good now. I did loose a flame angel though.