Skimmer - is it set up right?

[Mr.Asbury]

I thought I had my skimmer set up correctly. I was getting a nice brownish green foam in the top and had a nice dark green liquid in the cup. I have it elevated so it's sitting at 8" in the water (recommended 7-9) and the water level there is always the same.

After I cleaned it the first time, I'm now getting foam coming through the top of the collection cup and little to no liquid sitting in the cup. Do I have something set up wrong?


Here you can see the foam coming out of the top of the cap:

Here you can see where my water level in the skimmer is set to below the neck:

Here you can see how the skimmer is sitting in the sump:

And here's a close up of the skimmer's collection cup, full of foam bubbling out of the top but with no liquid skimmate. The cup was cleaned out at about 9pm last night, and it's currently 3:20pm.

 

[Crabs McJones]

How deep in the water is the skimmer?

 

[Mr.Asbury]

Water is 10" deep, it's raised on a 2" stand, so it's in 8" of water.

 

[cromag27 Verified Sponsor]

did you clean the entire thing, body and all? they can sometimes freak out if they’re cleaned too well. might need a little time to settle down.

 

[JumboShrimp]

I have noticed that after cleaning, the new ‘dirty’ bubbles will climb a clean neck differently than they will climb a dirty neck. Meaning, the next time you clean the unit, maybe clean the cup but leave the neck dirty and see whether you like the results better.

 

[Mr.Asbury]

That may be what happened. The neck was pretty dirty and I did rinse it out pretty well (but did not wipe/scrub). That may be the issue. I'll try to refrain from doing that in the future. Thanks!