Setting up ASM G2 or any skimmer

I have had my tank up and running for about a month. I put my skimmer in the sump and plugged it in. It gets skimmate, but it is only in the interior of the collection cup. It is dark brown and has to be rubbed off the interior. All of the videos I have seen look like they have about an inch of water in the bottom of the cup that is dark green. My question is do you put some water in there first to prime it or is it collected through skimming. I have adjusted the pipe to different heights but none seem to make it collect water in the cup.....thanks for any help.

 

Did you follow the instructions on breakin?

On all ASM's set the tube that adjusts the foam level to it's highest point and leave it there until it's flooding the cup, then empty the cup and slowly back it down until it's about 3/4 of the way up the chamber and let it sit again, sometimes it takes 24-48 hrs of sitting to really see how it's going to do on a certain setting

Once you get it set you shouldnt ever have to mess with it again

 

thanks for the response. It did not come with instructions.. When you say 3/4 the way up the chamber, which one the interior of the cup? The bubbles currently go about 3/4 of the way up the cup.

 

yeah the neck part inside the cup, basically the air pushes the poo up the neck, the bubbles should be barely reaching the top of the cup where they explode sending the poo down into the cup

it's kind of a tricky thing to get setup, but once you do it's pretty much concrete till you change something, I've had some G2's setup for 3+ years that I haven't had to adjust since I initially got them dialed in.

 

For a tank that is only been running a month I would not even think about skimming yet. You will be removing spores that you need to get coralline started growing. The only time I would run a skimmer is if you started the tank with some nasty LR with a bunch of die off. I never even put the skimmer in the sump until the tank was 6 months old.