Skimmer Collection Cup Overflow

E

esqu37107

I have a 45 Gallon Reef with a 20 Gallon Sump with about 60lbs of live rock and I had just got done doing a 5 gallon water change and i meant to empty the skimmer collection cup before i turned the pumps back on but, i forgot to empty the cup :oops: I didn't notice until it was too late that the skimmer was skimming very very wet. It was about half full of a week old skimmate. By the time I caught it the water was almost clear in the collection cup. My question is. What can i expect? ammonia spike? nitrate spike? Both? And should i do another water change?
 
I don't think it's a big deal, wet skimming is not a problem other then it removes salt water. If you have an auto top off you could see a slight drop in your salinity as you are replacing salt water with fresh water.

Generally speaking this is not a problm unless it continues for a long period of time.

if your skimmer overflowed back into the system I can't imagine how it would throw you into an amonia cycle. At worse you may suffer some water quality issues for the few days before you caught it.

Bottom line, IMHO, get the skimmer running right and check salinity just to be safe.
 
In a previous post I set up a poll of others that may have had this same problem. I stumbled across a way to stop the flow to my skimmer. I was going to submit it to Coralife but decided to just share it with all.

I noticed the return of my skimmer has a air inlet on it mounted on top of the return tube. This is on the return tube and not the one on the intake tube. I noticed that if I placed my finger over the inlet on the return tube it would stop the skimming action of the skimmer similar to turning off the valve located in the tank.

So what I did was cut a piece of air tubing to about 12 to 14 inches. I placed one end over the inlet on the return tube and placed the other end of the tube through the hole in the cover of the collection cup. I had to punch out the plastic in the hole to fit the tube through. I then feed the tubing into the collection cup to about the level that I would want the skimmer to stop skimming in the event that the cup would fill without me knowing about it or when I was away from home, about an inch from the top of the collection cup. When the water in the collection cup reached the level of the tube it would act the same way my finger did to stop the skimming action. This seemed to work real well when the valve in the tank was open to full and the wet/dry setting outside the tank was in the full open position.

I also found that if you pushed the tube to the bottom of the collection cup and worked the wet/dry control towards the closed position and watched the tubing it would actually siphon (spell check) the water out of the collection cup back into the tank. I would only recommend doing this when you are cycling the skimmer after cleaning it when the water in the skimmer cup is clean. I would do this several times as needed until the skimmer was cycled and I was able to set the in tank valve to full open and the outer control wet/dry to full open or to your desired wet/dry position.

I noticed this trick seems to work best when both valves are wide open. It didnt seem to work as well when the wet/dry control was partially closed. I also cut and fitted a micro bag to the return box to reduce the amount of micro bubbles in the tank while the skimmer is cycling. I use the term cycling to describe the amount of time it takes the skimmer to work without ejecting micro bubbles into the tank. According to the skimmer manufacture about 7 - 12 hours.

I am not exactly sure why this works but it is similar to holding your finger over the air intake on the inlet side of the skimmer. Doing that instantly stops the skimming process because the bubbles stop (no air getting into the system).

I am not sure this will work on other brand skimmers but I can see why not.

If anyone would like more info or a better explaination PM me and I will see what additional information I can provide. I can post a pic if you would like, just let me know.

Good Luck!!
 
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