Citrus odor coming from protein skimmer

AmbivalentAmbiguity · Aug 13, 2020

Hey guys.

Been doing this for a while and recently came back, I’ve got a freshly cycled tank and recently put a pair of clowns in. Have a slight issue and I can’t think of a better forum to put it in, so here we go!

I’ve got an older skimmer that I cleaned up and started using a week or so ago, but the strangest thing is that yesterday the skimmate has a tangerine/orange/citrus smell to it. The tank itself has no real smell, just the skimmer foam.

I did a 25% change yesterday, tested the parameters before (0 ammonia, ~10 nitrate, 8.1 PH, 1.025 sg) and the smell seems to persist today. I added some carbon now, but I’m really not sure what’s going on and I’m a little worried that something may be going on.

I did a search and didn’t find much, so any insight would be great, especially if it’s “you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

About the tank: it’s a Reefer 200XL (so 53 gallons total volume)

Thanks!

Larry L · Aug 13, 2020

Have you used citric acid to clean anything lately?

ichthyogeek · Aug 13, 2020

What are you feeding the fish/tank?

What did you use to clean the skimmer?

Have you used any "lemon"-y household cleaners lately/used an air freshener that's used a "lemony" scent in it?

AmbivalentAmbiguity · Aug 13, 2020

No citrus cleaners of any kind. The skimmer itself was cleaned with vinegar about three months ago and then sat and run in RO water for a week.

No citrus household cleaners, either.

I typically feed the fish a mix of Rods food, frozen mysis soaked with selcon, or the new life spectrum pellets.

And just so all bases are covered: no lotions or hand sanitizers either. Nobody puts their hands in this tank without washing them thoroughly.

Dan_P · Aug 13, 2020

Who else besides yourself describes the odor as “citrus”?

AmbivalentAmbiguity · Aug 13, 2020

Dan_P said:
Who else besides yourself describes the odor as “citrus”?

After a lot of promising that I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on them and trick them into smelling something super funky, my wife and sister smelled the skimmer and confirmed that I wasn’t having a stroke or going crazy.

Wife says she smells tangerines/mandarins, and my sister said she smells oranges or lemons.

It’s worth noting that there’s no essential oil diffusers in this house, we don’t spray Lysol/Clorox in the open air, and none of our other cleaning products are citrus scented.

The DT has no scent. The two clowns are happy as can be, no labored breathing or erratic movements.

WvAquatics · Aug 13, 2020

When I first hooked up my skimmer I got a really sweet citrus smell. Whish it stayed.

Dan_P · Aug 14, 2020

AmbivalentAmbiguity said:
After a lot of promising that I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on them and trick them into smelling something super funky, my wife and sister smelled the skimmer and confirmed that I wasn’t having a stroke or going crazy.

Wife says she smells tangerines/mandarins, and my sister said she smells oranges or lemons.

It’s worth noting that there’s no essential oil diffusers in this house, we don’t spray Lysol/Clorox in the open air, and none of our other cleaning products are citrus scented.

The DT has no scent. The two clowns are happy as can be, no labored breathing or erratic movements.

Well this just got more interesting!

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 14, 2020

Maybe they cleaned the new skimmer plastic parts with a citrus cleaner to degrease it.

AmbivalentAmbiguity · Aug 14, 2020

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Maybe they cleaned the new skimmer plastic parts with a citrus cleaner to degrease it.

I do wish it was something that simple. Regarding the skimmer: it’s several years old. About four months ago was when I planned on starting up again and I gave it a five day bath in white vinegar solution while turned on to the max. After that, I let it run in RO water for another week. It had been sitting dry on a shelf since then.

An update, though: the smell is strong as ever now, but the skimmer seems to be pulling out lots of brown gunk that’s congealing almost immediately in the cup. I separated that skimmate into a separate cup and it smells like normal skimmate. Honestly it feels like now it’s just the actual foam that must be creating the citrus scent.

As an aside, I just want to say that I appreciate the attention y‘all have given my conundrum as well as the questions to try to get to the bottom of it. I’m just about at the point where I’m going to chalk it up to “wait it out and see what happens” since WvAquatics suggested they had the same thing and nothing bad ever came of it.

Scubasteve11 · Aug 16, 2020

This week I started up a tank with a used skimmer and have the exact same smell. It's been driving me crazy.

I started the tank with Instant Ocean salt, reef saver and Stax rocks, and Tropic Eden sand. By chance did you use any of the same products?

Rick.45cal · Aug 16, 2020

Maybe it’s the shining!

AmbivalentAmbiguity · Aug 16, 2020

Scubasteve11 said:
This week I started up a tank with a used skimmer and have the exact same smell. It's been driving me crazy.

I started the tank with Instant Ocean salt, reef saver and Stax rocks, and Tropic Eden sand. By chance did you use any of the same products?

Red Sea salt, and caribsea aragamax sugar sized sand. The rocks were rocks that I bleached, dried for like a month, and then cured for another month. (The process was only so long because it took three months for my LFS to get my tank in)