difficulty with skimmer set up

hello,

Today I received my protein skimmer with no instructions or details about trouble shooting. I figured it out and set it up. It is perfect with one little detail: the air intake on the powerhead is not taking in air as long as the powerhead is attached to the skimmer.
If I remove it from the skimmer it works great with millions of bubbles and air is being sucked in and all is good. However, if I attach it to my skimmer the only way to see bubbles in the chamber is if I blow into the air intake tubing and I am not willing to do that 24 hours a day. After I blow air into it it works for a second or two expelling all the air I just blew in and than it stops.
Here is what I tried: changed the tubing, took the power head off and checked all parts to make sure they fit properly, lowered and raised the powerhead in the tank with improvised extension tubing. I don't know what to try next.
please help
the powerhead: Odyssea EX250 and the skimmer:60G Protein Skimmer HOB w/pump Reef Marine Pro Pack

 

I tried out one of the Odyssea skimmers awhile back and had the same problems. I finally connected an air pump to the air intake tubing and it worked fine. If you go this route, I would also install valve in the airline so you can fine tune it.

 

do you have the chamber filled with bioballs or bail if so my be restricting flow to point that your pump will not draw in air if you do have them id remove them and see because you really dont need them anyway

 

I got sucked into the same skimmer It looked just like the bak pak but @ 1/3 the price. I finally got mine to create bubles but now the problem was that the micro bubles were getting into the tank. My next mod was to purchase the bak pak bubble trap. It stops about 50% of the bubbles but Its till not good enough for me. the next thing Im going to try is:

Well ive been reading up on bak pak skimmers and they originally come with rio 600 pumps rated @ 200gph, The odyssea comes with a 250 gph.

The bak pak is Body Size: 7.5" wide, 3" deep, 17" height
odyssea is 8" Wide x 4" Deep x 18.50" Tall

The method to my madness ( I hope it works) since the odyssea is about 1 1/2 inch taller If I hook up the rio 600 with less gph and my micro bubble problem should go away.