Skimmer Overflow

[Dansters]

I’ve had a skimmer going for three weeks perfectly fine. It broke in quick and has been working but last week i took out my canister filter as for the past month I’ve been transitioning from that to a sump. Suddenly today it filled up completely in a matter of hours. I looked in the tank and there’s no empty snail shells, all the fish are fine, and the coral looks a bit agitated but not much. Does anyone know the cause of this?

 

[BeanAnimal]

This is not an emergency.

Skimmers can can be temperamental. Feeding, chemistry changes, barometric pressure changes, room temperature changes, etc. Dial it back and work from there.

When you ask for help for things like this.
Tank size?
Tank Age?
Tank Contents?
Feeding?
Water Chemistry?
Dosing?
Other Filtration?

The more detail you provide, the easier it is for people to help, instead of just giving you vague answers and providing wild guesses.

 

[Dansters]

This is not an emergency.

Skimmers can can be temperamental. Feeding, chemistry changes, barometric pressure changes, room temperature changes, etc. Dial it back and work from there.

Ok thank you. I think it’s the temperature which also makes me nervous because it went down to 74 this morning and back up to 77 now. I purchased a IM helio days ago just to have a back up heater, but it comes Tuesday. With LPS coral do you think the tank will be fine?

 

[BeanAnimal]

We can't answer those questions without knowing anything about the tank. See my response above, please help us help you. Nobody wants to play 20 questions just to figure out the basic system we are dealing with.

 

[Dansters]

We can't answer those questions without knowing anything about the tank. See my response above, please help us help you. Nobody wants to play 20 questions just to figure out the basic system we are dealing with.

Sorry for that I looked at your response through the email reminder I got and thought that was it but it just gave me a small preview and I responded.

My tank is 36 gallons plus a 10 gallon sump.

Age is about 2.5 years but tank with sump is probably 2 months, previously was canister filter

I use a filter sock that’s changed every 5 days a water change weekly a protein skimmer and that’s it. Looking to get algae reactor for my nutrients

Feeding is half a frozen cube daily

Inhabitants include various snails, a small flasher wrasse, small blue striped cleaner wrasse, a 1-2 inch clown, and an indigo dottyback.

Nitrates 5
Phosphates 0.33
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Ph ranges from 8-8.2

Not dosing anything and no other filtration besides the canister filter I removed a week ago.

Thank you for your help

 

[BeanAnimal]

If you have not lost any fish or inverts as of yet, I will assume they are fine. But 74 is pushing for fish and coral. That stress and temp swing could have easily caused some die off of macro/micro fauna or a small algae or bacterial bloom that caused the skimmer to overflow.

Dial the skimmer back and try to keep the temp more stable.

 

[Dansters]

If you have not lost any fish or inverts as of yet, I will assume they are fine. But 74 is pushing for fish and coral. That stress and temp swing could have easily caused some die off of macro/micro fauna or a small algae or bacterial bloom that caused the skimmer to overflow.

Dial the skimmer back and try to keep the temp more stable.

Ok thank you. I purchased a way more reliable heater so hopefully everything lives by Tuesday

 

[Auntjemimma]

I’ve had a skimmer going for three weeks perfectly fine. It broke in quick and has been working but last week i took out my canister filter as for the past month I’ve been transitioning from that to a sump. Suddenly today it filled up completely in a matter of hours. I looked in the tank and there’s no empty snail shells, all the fish are fine, and the coral looks a bit agitated but not much. Does anyone know the cause of this?

This can happen for any number of reasons which is why I always recommend getting a float switch or sensor to turn off the skimmer if it gets too full.

 

[Dansters]

This can happen for any number of reasons which is why I always recommend getting a float switch or sensor to turn off the skimmer if it gets too full.

I’m not really worried about it overflowing because it just went into the sump and doesn’t do anything wrong after that.

 

[Auntjemimma]

I’m not really worried about it overflowing because it just went into the sump and doesn’t do anything wrong after that.

Yes but you don't want to dump a load of concentrated skimmate back into your tank, that can cause all kinds of issues.