How can i fix my aquarium

[Whatnow]

I do see water/condensation slowly building up in the cup

It usually takes a couple days to break in and start collecting dirty water/scum in the cup.

 

[Celbrise]

I figured. right now it isn't even making a lot of foam to go up the collection cup but it is collecting dirty water I think through evaporation/condensaTION

 

[BlacknBlue2]

What you may be able to do depending on your skimmer is to adjust the water flow in so the bubbles that are being produced go into the cup. Also when you get a bigger setup you could do what I did and that was setup the skimmer in the sump and just let it run. This will get rid of the oils on the inside of the skimmer body and pump and within a few days it will be good to go.

Also my skimmer was a Reef Octopus with 2 drain holes in the cup, the holes made it so if i treat my tank with something the skimmer goes nuts on, I just drain into a 5gal bucket and away I go.

 

[Celbrise]

here is what it currently looks like since I added the skimmer yesterday in the pic you can see it barely even reaches the bottom of the intake tub to go into the collection cup. I'm not sure how I can adjust that it had a black pvc pipe that is glued on. the collection cup sits on the black pipe thing. it has collected dirty water but like I said it looks like it's from condensation building up in the collection cup and dripping down

 

[Celbrise]

 

[Lowstorm]

Where is the water at in the skimmer's body? If you need to, can you raise the water so that it hits the bottom of the uprising tube? I see a lot of bubbles in the water, so that doesn't appear to be an issue.

 

[Celbrise]

the body is in the back do you want to see a pic of that? the water level in the tank it almost to the top. it is about maybe an inch of half an inch to the very rim should I top it off?

 

[Lowstorm]

yes, a pic of the body of the skimmer would help.
The water level in the tank isn't what I'm wondering, just the skimmer and how high the water is in it.

 

[Celbrise]

ddd

 

[Celbrise]

the bubbles stop just about the top of that little black ring before the collection cup

 

[Lowstorm]

Looks good. As someone said in the other thread (I think) It'll be a few days before it 'breaks in' and produces the nummy skimmate.

 

[Celbrise]

okay thanks I cut the air line hose to see if that helped but it didn't look like it did much just made the tank look cleaner since hose isn't running in the tank now.

 

[Celbrise]

so i just bought a salt water test kit by api the liquid ones and also some liquid bacteria. results are Ph - 8.0 Ammonia - 0.25ppm Nitrate- 80ppm i believe color was a deep orange but not totally red so might be 160ppm but im pretty sure it is 80ppm definetly not 40ppm. Nitrite - 0ppm.

how screwed are my parameters? would like comments, advice to fixing them. will do some research at what they should be in a few minutes. i also added some beneficial bacteria to the tank 55ml. stated 10ml per 10gallons. i assumed it needed more bacteria seeing as how i have diatoms

 

[jsbull]

I would use some Phosphate Rx to weaken the alge if you want to try to rehab the tank. In my opinion, you're going to need to add a sump and other standard equipment eventually if you want an easier run at this.

 

[Celbrise]

i added some phosguard but i don't think i can run a sump on this one unless i upgrade or buy another tank. don't really want to run a sump on this tank because it's used and doesn't look pleasant in person thinking of getting a 75gal or another 55gal new and just run a sump on that on the bottom along with a skimmer on the bottom as well. might be a while though. if anything i'll run the sump on this one and break it down. need to figure out if i can ship all the materials in state due to all these laws it's hard to get anything inside and stores dont really provide much here only for fresh water tanks

 

[Celbrise]

so I just came home last night after work and surprisingly my skimmer broke in really nice. foam is now shooting out from the top well not shooting out but the foam is now there and I'm going to let it run and maybe tweak it

 

[BlacknBlue2]

cool, cause now you can set your skimmer to skim drier or wetter, just depends on how much you want to empty the cup out. I set mine so that I could go 2 weeks before neeeding to empty it.

 

[Celbrise]

how would i adjust it to do that? i just tried to tighten it to raise the foam a bit more since it doesn't seem to be creating a lot of foam to reach the very top constantly. it goes up and then it goes back down and slowly builds up again. also would a dryer or wetter skim be better i mean wetter would remove more water right?

 

[BlacknBlue2]

IMO I liked having alot of micro bubbles, it pulled more crap out in the long run. It would mean dropping the water level to get more air. Also you have to factor in that your bio footprint is not all that large since you don't have alot of fish.

 

[Celbrise]

i might test out the microbubbles i mean it seems to add more water movement in the tank which i could probably use but i just tweaked it so now the foam went down again probably will come back up when i get home from work. i used to have more fish but they slowly started to die off plus i've seen that the trigger and puffer and tang can get fairly big so i didn't want to over crowd the tank i mean it is only a 55gal after all.