Protien Skimmer help

Good afternoon reefers.

I have a coralife protein skimmer that i have been having a tough time adjusting. When i first set it up it would work great and i would clean out the collection cup once a week. Now i seem to be having a problem and I'm not sure if it normal. The collection cup used to fill up and have the dark colored mater in it. Not no mater what i set it at it fills up fast with bubbles. I would say that it fills up a 1 gallon jug once a day. I have what looks like a valve on the water exit that when turned it restricts the output and forces the water through the collection cup. I also have a valve on the pump to limit the water intake and when turned too much the micro bubbles will turn off. It is currently sitting in the sump and has a clamp to allow it to hank on the side of the tank.

I have cleaned it out and tried lifting it further out of the water and was going to remove it from the sump tonight and just have it sitting on the side with the intake and return in the sump.

Please help, Thanks

 

Did you recently clean more than just the collection cup? Sounds like it's breaking in again.

 

Do you have a lot of microbubbles exiting the skimmer?

It may be because you used some epoxy in the tank; that stuff messes up the skimmer for a little while.

 

No i havent changed anything.

 

any other ideas?

 

My skimmer was doing that, so I turned down the air intake, and that helped. But you said you already tried that...

 

The only other thing i think could be causing it is that i have a been treating the tank with metaflax. for cloudy eyes. It creates bubbles

 

Any chemical that changes the surface tension of the water it's in will cause problems with skimmers.

Here's a quick experiment to try and see if this is it:

Get 2 cups of tank water in 2 separate cups. Add a normal dose of metaflax to one of the cups.

Take an air stone with air line tubing. put the air stone on the bottom of the plain tank water and blow into it. Pay attention to the bubbles. Do the same for the metaflax cup.

If the metaflax cup has bubbles that stay for any longer than the normal tank water cup, that's your problem.