air bubbles?!?!!!!

my sump return pump creates a vortex on the suction side of the pump, which creates trillions of tiny bubbles in the display tank. ive tried to increase the water level in the sump, but any more water and the baffles would be useless. any ideas?

 

Screw a threaded PVC 90 degree elbow on the suction facing down so it draws water from closer to the bottom.

 

this is what im workin with

 

should i raise my ATO float? if so how high should it be above the sumps outlet?

 

The level you maintain in your sump will depend on several things such as how much freeboard or extra room you have when the power goes off to contain the backsiphonage, what level your skimmer performs best at and how large your return section is. I run about 8" depth in a 30G long sump which gives me way more room than I need to contain the 3.8 calculated gallons backsiphon I get in a power outage and my skimmer seems to like that level.

Something else i see in the photo is your protein skimmer effluent dumping in to the return section, I would think this would cause microbubble problems and is why you usually have multiple baffles between the skimmer and return pump to dissipate bubbles. Can you rotate the skimmer so it dumps on the opposite side and the bubbles have a chance to dissipate?

 

ill give that a shot, and i raised it up a bit, the skimmer level didnt seem to change at all, and the sump still has like 7-8 inches of free space when i turn off the pumps and what not.

 

I agree that your skimmer is your main problem. It is dumping water with micro air bubbles into your return and that is not good.

You need to give the water that comes out if your skimmer time to allow those air bubbles to come to the surface and exist.

On my skimmer I even have a foam donut on the output to act as a silencer/bubble eliminator.

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Here is my setup. See how I have the skimmer, then my bubble traps breakup whatever is left of micro bubbles.

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had microbubble probs with my skimmer. I lengthend my output (hob skimmer) by almost 2 feet at nearly 90 degrees, that eliminated almost 95% of the bubbles with a tee in at the end for overflow. Then I took the spent bag which housed my carbon and rubber banded that like a sock on the end. boom. bubbles gone. I'm thinking pantyhose would work too.

 

I am wanting to do this same bubble trap. How were you able to silicone the 3 pieces of glass that close?