need help with beckett skimmer

[Engloid]

I have an MRC-3 skimmer. Its worked great since I got it....till a cpl days ago. One night, I checked it and it was working great. The next day, its not. The pump seems to be working, and it will pump water into the chamber. I can adjust the gate valve and it will rise properly. However, the air inlet isn't making the usual loug sucking noise, and there is no froth forming. There are very few bubbles in the water, and many of them are large bubbles.

I pulled the impeller out and cleaned it....no damage found. I pulled the big stack thing and the beckett...ithe thing in the glass section, if I understand right. I cleaned both. I also cleaned the air inlet valve.

Is there something inside the black base, box section that needs cleaning? In other words, is there something like a spray nozzle in there? When I removet the large stack part of the inlet, I can see all the way through...no nozzle, so I'm assuming its inside the unit.

How do I remove and clean it?

 

[MBSL55]

I had a ts300 beckett style skimmer and would run it in a container with a vinegar water 50/50 mix overnight to clean out deposits. Might work for yours too.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy SIII

 

[Engloid]

I had a ts300 beckett style skimmer and would run it in a container with a vinegar water 50/50 mix overnight to clean out deposits. Might work for yours too.

Ive taken this thing apart, top to bottom, and of course there is a little bit of deposits on it here and there, but nowhere near as bad as it was a month ago when the skimmer was working perfectly.

I pulled the whole riser tube off and looked into the base tank part, and there's no nozzle or anything in there....so I guess the beckett in the clear section is where all the "action" happens...and then the box is just used as a base, with elbow inside directing the flow of water upwards into the reaction chamber.

Anybody have other ideas?

 

[Engloid]

I still have had no luck. The skimmer is in pieces. I emailed MRC, and their customer support was less than helpful, borderlining on insulting. I had the email subject as "MRC 3," and told them the model of pump I was using...which I think was at one time one of their reccomended models of pumps....however, the response was "I’m not sure what model you actually have or if you have a riser, but I would start with using the correct pump."

Really???!!! so even though the pump I'm using has almost identical specs to their currently reccomended one, I'm supposed to fork out about $300 in hopes that it MIGHT be that my pump is bad? The guy suggested nothing, other than that.

I find it a bit insulting that they didn't even offer any help at all...only said to throw money at it, not knowing what the problem is. No suggestions of what to check, what may be wrong, how to troubleshoot....nothing, but basically tell me to buy more crap. Sorry...but if this is the customer support these people provide, I surely won't be buying one of theirs.

 

[tigé21v]

Did you fully disassemble the beckett? There's a pic here Reefing The Australian Way Forums • View topic - DIY Kent Venturi/Beckett Skimmer (near the bottom of the page) that shows you what it should look like. Be sure there's no small snail shell or anything else inside the beckett, if there is it'll keep it from performing properly.
Have you checked to see if the something may be blocking the outlet from the skimmer cup? If the air can't exit properly from the skimmer (through the skimmate discharge outlet), then the skimmer's beckett(s) can't pull in any air. The same way the remote collection container shuts the skimmer down when it is full. The back pressure keeps the beckett from being able to draw in any air.
I have a mrc-3 with dual becketts that I bought used. The pump that came with it was a mag18- definitely not the recommended pump for one, let alone two becketts. I know with the mag18 the skimmer ran at less than it's optimum, but it still pulled mud from the tank. Awesome skimmer, I love it. Unfortunately, they are just so finicky and power hungry.

 

[Engloid]

I called MRC today, and wound up talking to Jeremy. This guy really seems to know skimmers well....knew my model as it was sitting in front of him. We narrowed it down to a worn beckett, or water flow issue. The beckett likely wouldn't fail overnight, so we leaned towards flow. Since the impeller and housing were fine, I checked piping....and found a bioball had been sucked up into the bulkhead. guess I will need to find a strainer so this doesn't happen again.


...and I can still reccomend MRC to others! Jeremy was able to tell me more than instruction manuals, and I'm confident I will be better able to adjust it now, so it should be even better than before.