Problems with a Reef Devil

Good luck John LOL see why I say little anymore Like I told you ETSS are a different animal .. But a great skimmer ..

O.K I'll offer this up rather then try to explain it I used ETSS for yrs great skimmers and the most problems arise from the owners rather then the skimmer itself . They do not just foam to make foam you must has some DOC's in the system to give them something to do..

Have a read
http://www.superskimmer.com/Manuals_Cat/RD_D InstrQstart.pdf

 

You are right. There very last part of what you said is why you want to leave the skimmer off though. "The only difference is how much of a spike you are going to have." If you only had a little ammonia to begin with than the spike when you add a fish will be a lot larger than it would be if you cycled with a dead piece of shrimp (a lot of ammonia).

 

In order to get a good idea of what a skimmer can do, you need some sort of bioload for it to work with. The best you can do at this point, if you decide to run it, is to let it sit and bubble at the bottom of the tube.

Agreed. Once you get it dialed in, it is unstoppable. Patience is the key. As well as waiting for a bioload.

 

You have me curious Wouldn't it be better to let it bubble wet enough to simply run water through the skimmer to keep the entire skimmer wet and semi-broken in instead of at the bottom of the tube? I ask because my personal preference for breaking one in is to run it extremely wet, let it flood back over into the sump (or drain through a drain back into the sump). You aren't collecting any skimmate because its simply running in a circle. It allows you to "tinker" with it during the break in and cycle time for the tank.

 

Well.....tinkering is fine, if you know what to expect as the end goal. But with no bioload, there is no consistancy between the now and what has yet to come. So the tinkering that occurs at this point really has nothing to do with the real game, not with this skimmer. ETSS's are just like that.

 

Nice!

Very informative thread guys!

 

I am getting fish this week end so we will see what happens

 

Well i got two clown fish and less than 24 hours later my skimmer was pulling out some nasty stuff.

 

wanted to give an update since i only have two small fish my skimmer pulled out a bunch of stuff then stoped i think this is because the bio load is still very small.

 

With just the two clowns, that is a very good possibility is that it stops until enough waste is in the system for it to start pulling more out.