Fluval 13.5 gallon sub pump leak

[inneedofhelpasap]

Hello! My husband and I have a 13.5 Fluval saltwater tank that has been running perfect for the last few months. We added a protein skimmer two months ago, and it has been fine. Until recently the back chamber, sub pump?, Has been emptying, and causing the blower in the tank to shoot hundreds of micro bubbles out every second. I’m certain it’s a leak, just not sure where to find it, or if that’s really the problem. The whole tank is crashing! Please help!!

 

[saltcats]

If the pump chamber is continuously emptying my guess would be that the flow rate of the pump is faster than the water coming back into the back chambers (aka, the pump is pushing water back into the display faster than water is flowing through the overflow into the back chambers). Can you try removing your filter media (ie floss, sponge, etc) and see if that fixes it?

Is there anything visually blocking the intake weir? I've found in my AIO tank even a surprisingly small piece of algae or a single snail crawling over the grate is enough to make the level in the pump chamber drop quite a bit.

 

[inneedofhelpasap]

If the pump chamber is continuously emptying my guess would be that the flow rate of the pump is faster than the water coming back into the back chambers (aka, the pump is pushing water back into the display faster than water is flowing through the overflow into the back chambers). Can you try removing your filter media (ie floss, sponge, etc) and see if that fixes it?

Is there anything visually blocking the intake weir? I've found in my AIO tank even a surprisingly small piece of algae or a single snail crawling over the grate is enough to make the level in the pump chamber drop quite a bit.

Thank you so much for the reply. We are going to try and replace the filter media and check for any blockage.