Tank Filter Seems to be Spewing sand..Help please!

BeastlyBeard · Mar 17, 2020

Hello all,
I’m new to the hobby and yesterday I did my first water change on my 25 g reed aquarium. I noticed when the water level dropped below the filter all of a sudden the filter started spewing sand everywhere. It hasn’t stopped since. Any help would be much appreciated!
I have the AQUATOP 25G All in One tank just FYI. Should anyone need the specs on my filter it’s the one that came with the tank mentioned above.
if you need more information let me know!
thanks!

nitrodude · Mar 17, 2020

Sand? Or bubbles?
Cant imagine it spewing endless amounts of sand but I guess crazier things may have happened

BeastlyBeard · Mar 17, 2020

nitrodude said:
Sand? Or bubbles?
Cant imagine it spewing endless amounts of sand but I guess crazier things may have happened

It looks like sand. The tank itself has sand floating around. They don’t look like bubbles. Here is a quick video

nitrodude · Mar 17, 2020

Those are micro bubbles.

Lower the pumps inlet lower into the tank to keep it from sticking in air

BeastlyBeard · Mar 17, 2020

nitrodude said:
Those are micro bubbles.

Lower the pumps inlet lower into the tank to keep it from sticking in air

Gotcha. Can you elaborate a bit more? The tank is fully submersed in water right now.

BeastlyBeard · Mar 17, 2020

BeastlyBeard said:
Gotcha. Can you elaborate a bit more? The tank is fully submersed in water right now.

Sorry I meant the filter is fully submersed.

nitrodude · Mar 17, 2020

I am not familiar with your setup/filter.

But your filter/pump is ducking in air. Either from splashing water next to the pump or sucking air from the surface of the water.
You can lower the pump deeper into the water or raise water level and see if it stops among bubbles

BeastlyBeard · Mar 18, 2020

nitrodude said:
I am not familiar with your setup/filter.

But your filter/pump is ducking in air. Either from splashing water next to the pump or sucking air from the surface of the water.
You can lower the pump deeper into the water or raise water level and see if it stops among bubbles

I did all of the above and I am still having this issue. I took out the filter and sure enough, the air bubbles stopped as soon as I removed the filter. I looked inside it and made sure there were no issues but once I reconnected it the bubbles showed up again.
Any idea where the issue might be? Should I take out all of my media and see if there are any hidden pockets of air? My skimmer seems to be working fine - I don't see any air bubbles popping up there. I also have a sponge that seems to have a lot of food in it - could that be causing a problem? I am hesitant to clean the sponge because I don't want to lose any of the beneficial bacteria.
Thanks for helping me out!

BeastlyBeard · Mar 18, 2020

BeastlyBeard said:
I did all of the above and I am still having this issue. I took out the filter and sure enough, the air bubbles stopped as soon as I removed the filter. I looked inside it and made sure there were no issues but once I reconnected it the bubbles showed up again.
Any idea where the issue might be? Should I take out all of my media and see if there are any hidden pockets of air? My skimmer seems to be working fine - I don't see any air bubbles popping up there. I also have a sponge that seems to have a lot of food in it - could that be causing a problem? I am hesitant to clean the sponge because I don't want to lose any of the beneficial bacteria.
Thanks for helping me out!

Update: I checked everything and the microbubbles stopped when the protein skimmer was turned off. I have an Aquatop Protein Skimmer for the RC24ECO series. The manual is vague on how to troubleshoot issues - any help with this would be much appreciated!