Microbubbles! Need help solving.

The 90 gallon build I'm doing is full of water and cycling. I assumed that the cloudy water was just debris from the sand and dry rock I used. That is until I had the lights on and working today and realized that it's millions of micro bubbles.
I've been searching and reading all morning in hopes of finding a solution w/o starting a redundant thread but everything I've read, I've tried or was already done so I need some help figuring this issue out.

Return pump is a mag 12. Throttled it to reduce flow- no help
3/4" line to the bulk head. All joints glued and no apparent leaking.
1/2" line after to bulk head to a LocLine "y" and exits through two air exposed LocLine's with flares.

^^^^^^possible the exposed line is allowing air in?^^^^^^^
Only other thing I can think of is the pump is to big to begin with.

This is frustrating as h***. I didn't build the sump with bubble traps on a recommendation from someone in the know, to save on space.

 

How big is and what type of sump do you have? You might be able to place a sponge between the skimmer and return pump. Are you using filter socks?

 

Sump is a 29 gallon AGA with 3 sections. I've haven't used socks for a long time because I believe they steal food from the filter feeders. May have to on this build though.
No skimmer either. (yet) this is all a flow issue that so far.

I was thinking of cutting sponge so it rides the top of my baffles. ?? ya' know? to trap the bubbles on the intake sides of the baffle.

 

Thats what I would do. Meaning putting a sponge between the baffles. How many inches is your baffles apart?

 

Having too much flow through the sump is the issue most people have with microbubbles. Aim for 3-4x your DT volume. So for a 90g I would aim for a pump that puts back 300-400gph in the tank (after head loss). Let powerheads take care of circulation in the tank.

 

That's what I said earlier.. I don't have bubble traps. Didn't build them in to save space for a bigger fuge. I kinda figured it out a bit totally by accident. I need to change some plumbing around but got about half of the bubbles taken care of.

Yeah I understand this. The pump is what came with the tank and I don't have money to get another pump. I was hoping I could control flow by throttling the pump but that isn't working out to well.

 

I got this problem solved today too! No more bubbles and the beast of a pump is choked down to around 650 gph at the return. It's the last mag drive I will own. I never believed they heated water as much as everyone said until I could actually watch the water temp dropping as I reworked the plumbing today. pumps been back in the system for a little over an hour and the temp rose 1.9 degrees and still climbing.

 

Holy chiller Batman!!!!

Dang that sucks big time.

 

Word! Think I'll try a different brand pump before dropping that much on a chiller. The halides have been on for a couple hours now and they aren't effecting water temp's near as much.

 

There is no mystery here, it's all a numbers thing. A Mag 12 uses 110w at full power. A Mag 9.5 which is what you should have uses 93 watts. a Ehiem 1262 which is the 9.5 equivelant uses 80 watts.

Cutting back flow cuts back on power consumed... even still the Mag 12 only uses 30w over what a Ehiem 1262 would use. Unwanted heat for sure... but leaving a 30w heater on full time is not going to make you need a chiller. The pumps for the chiller alone would add more heat than the 30w. I'm pretty confident if you have the Mag 12 down to half power you are probably around that 80w number. That 80w is no different than turning on a 80w heater... but it is comparable to all the other pumps out there.

Mags do use more power and therefore add more heat. But it is small and no need to trash a pump. It is a common complaint about Mags, but not really a justified one. Numbers are numbers.

Now a bad pump pulling more power than spec is a different discussion.