Red Devil 150 Protein Skimmer

BirdGuy21 · Nov 22, 2018

Hey everyone,

Trying to set up my Red Devil 150 nano protein skimmers that came with my 45 gallon tank. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, but the collection cup either overflows with water or nothing reaches the cup. I've tried looking online for instructions but can't seem to find anything. I've watched a couple video reviews where people have had them almost submersed in water and also with only the pump in water. Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong here? They are in the overflow compartments of my tank.

GoVols · Nov 22, 2018

BirdGuy21 said:
Hey everyone,

Trying to set up my Red Devil 150 nano protein skimmers that came with my 45 gallon tank. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, but the collection cup either overflows with water or nothing reaches the cup. I've tried looking online for instructions but can't seem to find anything. I've watched a couple video reviews where people have had them almost submersed in water and also with only the pump in water. Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong here? They are in the overflow compartments of my tank.

Hello,
Welcome to Reef 2 Reef, and hope you feel at home.

A new skimmer has to build a slime coat on the inside to be able to stable out and dial in.
There is a break in period and it's perfectly normal for a new skimmer to act very touchy.

A new setup makes a new skimmer take longer to break in too. There's not enough dissolved organics in a new reef to dial in a skimmer.

Giving it a vinegar bath may help (by removing production oils), but stay patient.

BirdGuy21 · Nov 22, 2018

Thank you @GoVols, I’m really enjoying being on the forum. Everyone so far has been very welcoming and it seems like a great community. Considering how much there is to learn, a place like this is very helpful.

Good to know about the break in period. I did buy the setup used and tore it down/ reset up this past Saturday, but the skimmers were dry for a while and I haven’t had them running the past week due to the issues I mentioned. I was leaning more toward user error since I saw them in action when I picked up the tank, but I didn’t think about the effects of tear down and dry out.

I have both skimmers up and working as of right now. Tinkered around with skimmer height around 6:30 this evening and think I have them in an okay spot. There’s about a quarter inch of skim in the collection cups. Since I haven’t had any overflow issues I am leaving them run all night- here’s to hoping they won’t overflow! The skim isn’t very dark but it is off colored.

BirdGuy21 · Nov 23, 2018

Updated on the skimmers. Got the one dialed in okay and seems to be working alright. Still trying to figure out how high up in the tube the bubbles should go. The second one is making a strange noise that stops if I cover the airline tube output up top. Not sure whats going on with that one.