Film on the top of the water!! HELP PLEASE

Forgot to say that when you get your RO unit you should do several water changes to get your phosphates and nitrates down. It is probably very difficult to do well in this hobby without an RO unit. Good move.

 

lol not so fast. TDS on my tap water reads 10! Anyways, they've pretty much summed up how to solve your issues. GL and happy reefing.

 

I got an Eshopps overflow with a similar skimmer box. The same company also makes an affordable sump set up. The nice thing is that the Eshopps overflow box is only a few inches wide so you don't have to have your tank too far out from your wall. If you look around you can find pretty good deals. If you get a sump....you can hang a protein skimmer off of it or put one directly in the sump. Just a thought.

 

JimDaddy, you have a good eye. That is an Eshopps overflow that I'm using now that I have a sump. I started withou a sump and used a HOB AquaC remora skimmer along with a preskimmer box.

 

Grocery store water for the win! It's RO/DI water, it's just not made at home. I trust it anyways, because I've had zero problems with it. A friend of mine uses the same water, and zero problems with his setup either. I guess we got lucky?

 

Oh, and a major thing I noticed, is that you probably don't have a sump (if you had one you wouldn't have this surface problem), meaning the surface skimmers described above will do jack squat to help you.

If you have a canister filter, use something like this: Aquarium Surface Skimmer It attaches directly to the intake and helps break everything up.

If you don't have a canister or similar filter, then I would use the powerheads, and maybe take on of those really thin/fine fish nets to scoop it up every now and then.

 

I almost hung a remora off my sump but I scored a Euroreef 5-2 (rated for 75g) for 140 bucks on the "Warehouse Sale" page of their on-line store. The eshopps box is great though, for approx. $50, you can't go wrong.

 

Lucky you, I've never found a grocery store water machine that's RO/DI - they are all just RO, you sure yours is both??? I can't wait to get my RO/DI for the house!