Skimmer overflowing

[reef-freak]

I hope I'm in the right forum. I treated my 60 Gallon Cube about a week ago with chemiclean. 2 days later I did a 30 gallon water change.the skimmer kept overflowing heavily so yesterday I did a 18 gallon water change.it's still overflowing but it slowed up a little. I was told by LFS it would take a few days for it to calm down enough to put the collection cup back on the skimmer and then a few days for it to be back to normal.it's still overflowing pretty good and it's sending the foam air bubbles into the aquarium.I would appreciate any help or recommendations to get back to normal. Thanks in advance for your help

 

[ludnix]

If your skimmer cup has a drain line attached I have had good luck doing smaller waterchanges via draining from the overflowing skimmer. This seems to pull the dirtiest foam causing agents out of the water a little better than a regular water change. I just run a tube from the skimmer drain line to my dirty water bucket and let it fill up. Usually, I can't get 5 gallons from this method on my 50g tank before the skimmer isn't foaming enough to do this anymore.

Have you tried running carbon as well after the chemi-clean? I think that is advised to remove toxins from the dead cyano and removal of the medication itself.

 

[sk8elenex92]

Thats normal. My skimmer would over flow for almost 2 weeks every time I used chemiclean. Put the cup half on. Let some water drain back into the tank and allow some to get into the cup slowly.

 

[reef-freak]

Yes ludnix I put chemi pure blue a brand new one into the fuge section of my eshopps 100 fuge sump thanks for responding

 

[reef-freak]

Thanks sk8elenex92. I'll try to put the collection cup half on tonight

 

[Watevadog5]

I second the drain line. That will pull the impurities out much quicker

 

[TMB]

Yup, normal to overflow the skimmer after chemiclean. There are 2 things to do to fix it:
1. raise the skimmer to stop the massive overflow and reduce to a small overflow amount.
2. Like others have said put the drainline in a bucket and "wet skim" until it's all out of the tank.

 

[reef-freak]

thank you fellow members for your responses. I'll try raising the skimmer and draining the cup. how long did it take to get around 5 gallons of wet skim?will have to get 5 gal of salt water to replace wet skim first.

 

[ludnix]

thank you fellow members for your responses. I'll try raising the skimmer and draining the cup. how long did it take to get around 5 gallons of wet skim?will have to get 5 gal of salt water to replace wet skim first.

It depends on the skimmer, but I had to keep on eye on the bucket, it can fill pretty fast and you do not want to have that overflow onto the floor! Wet skimming seemed to fix the problem within an evening though compared to the two weeks it took otherwise. You want to make sure you're replacing the water with new saltwater and any auto top off units turned off. You may also have better luck with straight carbon in a reactor than chemi-pure. The carbon is doing all the work for removing chemi-clean I believe, so the other resin beads and nitrogen fixing media won't take out of the chemi-clean, though they are very useful for regular tank maintenance. I have used a phosban unit mostly filled with carbon on other tanks and that works great too, just more expensive since you exhaust the carbon quickly.

 

[reef-freak]

Thanks for the advice ludnix

 

[reef-freak]

UPDATE : skimmer is back to normal. Water is crystal clear. Thanks again for your replies. Going to put Marine pure in fuge section at next water change. Looking into brs dual media reactors for gfo and carbon