Life Reef Skimmer

[IBASSFSH]

Does anyone have any photos of their Life reef skimmer in action? I just hooked one up, and I am trying to determine where the water level needs to be in the riser tube. It seemed to be working fine a couple of days ago, but has stopped skimming. I did hook up a Aqua zone ozonizer and a air pump to push the ozone to the skimmer. I may not need the air pump since it has a venturi injector on it. Any advice is appreciated.

[haid]

You can't adjust the height of the water in the skimmer? If you can't adjust the skimmer to a water level of about 1/2 the body it is probably due to back pressure from the exit tube. Remove the tube from the output and see what happens. I had to replace mine with a short peice of large diameter tubing to keep the back pressure down. This is what I would guess your issue to be as well. Give it a try.

[IBASSFSH]

I can adjust the height of the water in the tube, it just does not skim. It seemed to be skimming some a couple of days ago, but I hooked up my ozone unit and it seems to have stopped. I currently have the water level rightup to the bottom of the big tube right before it goes into the neck of the section that holds the collection cup.
Its making bubbles, but the foam does not seem to be dry. If I turn down the flow a little it gets further away from making foam that will reach the collection cup.
My pump is plenty strong enough. I will try and post a picture tomorrow.

[chummy]

That's because the ozone burned everything out of the water; there is nothing left to skim at this time.

[IBASSFSH]

I have this set up on a new 215 gallon reef ready tank with an additional 200 gallons rubbermaid stock tanks. I have to wipe of the green looking algae every morning off of the glass. Within one hour its building back up, and it really bothers me.
I used RO/DI water to fill the tank, but the tds was not at zero. I have since replaced the RO membrane and the other catridges as well.
I have ordered phosphate remover and carbon to help pull any phosphates out of the system. I have a really large media reactor to use on it, and hopefully this will help.
I have enough rowaphos to do 400 gallons, and I have two buckets of Seachems phosphate remover. I will also add ESV's carbon in the reactor with it.
It would seem there would be enough to skim even with the ozone due to the skimmer being undesize. I do have another skimmer that is identical to the one already in use. I just have not had the time to hook it up yet.

[chummy]

Generally if nothing has been added to the water like food or sticking your hands it will skim until it's caught up then start again when something is there. I know when I run ozone it oxidizes stuff so well there is almost nothing left to skim.

I run a Lifereef skimmer myself and think it's better than a Euroreef but without ozone.
If you stop using ozone the skimmer will have to break in again because the walls are stripped clean.

[chummy]

I forgot to ask you what kind of salt are you using?

[chummy]

Here is a photo I just shot of my Lifereef skimmer. Hope it helps.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dwainef/Lifereef_Skimmer.jpg

[IBASSFSH]

I was getting some stuff like that in your picture prior to turning on the ozone. Now nothing really. I use Instant ocean salt.
I have my skimmer water level basically in the same place as yours. I thought thats were it needed to be. I could not see any other level it would run at other than right there. My skimmer looks just like yours also.
My venturi is also black, but yours looks a little different.
I still have not been able to post a picture like you did. I always have to post on in my gallery and put the link in the post.
Thanks for all your input and the photo, I will try to take a picture of mine in the morning. I work the night shift 7:00pm-7:00 a.m.

[fishdoc11]

FWIW I used to run mine about 1/4" below the top of the 6" tube. It sounds like it is getting used to the changes in the tank. I would set it how you had it working well for you before and wait. It will start skimming again.
Chris

[IBASSFSH]

Thats about where I have it set right now. I was hoping it would really be pulling out some gunk, but it has not started to as of yet.
I guess I am getting nervous due to phosphates rising. I am going to change about 40 gallons or more this weekend. Then I will set up the media reactor I have, I am just waiting for my carbon to come in. I have all the phosphate removing stuff I need for a while.
The tank is fairly new all new sand, but the live rock was in my stock tank curing for three months. I currently have five fish in it. 4 green chromis, and a really small fox face rabbit fish.
I have a large sailfin, and a medium naso in my ninty gallon tank ready to spread their fins some in the 215. I just do not want to add them too soon. The ammonia, and nitrites have not been recording hardly at all. Maybe the liverock that had been curing for three months made the cycle minimal.
The tank has been going for three weeks now. I did seed some live sand from my ninty gallon tank,and added some of that sand that has the needed bacteria for cycling new tanks faster.

[fishdoc11]

What is your PO4 and what kit are you using?

[IBASSFSH]

The test kit I have is Sailafert, and I probably mis-spleed that. I will check it today. I checked it a couple of days ago, and it was about middle way on the chart.

[IBASSFSH]

The Salifert test shows it to be .5 - 1.0. I am leaning more toward the .5 on the color chart.
I am planning a water change this weekend to try and lower it down some.

[srb5046th]

only semi related but don't you find the Salifert PO test kit color chart to be really hard to read?

[IBASSFSH]

Yeah it is kind of hard to detemine exactly what level it is at. I guess the clearer the better.

[fishdoc11]

The skimmer will not fix that......much. Are you using RO/DI water? Another guess as to the source of the PO4 is:
I did seed some live sand from my ninty gallon tank
Was the sand really dirty?
Chris

[IBASSFSH]

I do use RO/DI water,but my membrane was getting weak. I just changed it out right after I filled up the tank. I also changed the other cartridges. The water was not as good as it is now, but still alot better than tap water here.
As far as the sand goes I only put in like a couple of cups. Nothing drastic. It had some haze to the water in the cup, but I expected that.
On one note I turned down the amount I was dosing on the ozone , and it started skimming more. Although it is mainly wet skimmate, its better than no skimmate. I will probably start up my other skimmer this weekend, which is also a life reef.
I did one more thing yesterday morning, I widened the return vents on the Oceanic overflows with a utility knife. This allowed me to turn the flow of my main pump up some more without overflowing the tank. This seemed to help the glass from getting as much of that green looking algae as fast as it was.
I already have two Tunze 6100, and I am going to put a 3rd one in soon. I already have the stream, not sure if I want a magnet or to use the supplied mounting brackets. I will probably put this one in the back middle blowing forward or to the left looking at the tank. Or I may just put to stream on one side.
I also hope to put my media reactor inline this weekend. I was trying to wait for my 4 lbs of carbon to be delivered, but I may just start out with the phosphate remover, with the little bit of carbon I already have (about a pound or two).

[chtan]

I have the same Life Reef Skimmer shown in Chummy's picture .... its works very well and the way my water level is set is also quite similar to the picture shown.

IBASSFSH - have you used a kalkwasser Reactor ?... it wld help to precipitate the phosphates from the fresh water ...

And with the amount of Rowaphos u are using, you shd have very minimal PO4.

And talking about ozone ... in my 265 gallon tank when I was dosing 50 mg/hr ozone and hooked the Aquamedic Ozonizer to my Life Reef Skimmer, it did not skim very well ....

Now I connect the ozone to my Turboflotor 1000 and let my Life Reef run independently it runs normally.

[IBASSFSH]

I just turned my ozonizer off for the time being. I may hook up one of my Aqua-C skimmers to it. It is ozone compatible, and let the Life Reef do its thing.
I have three Aqua-C EV-120 skimmers and two of the Life Reef skimmers pictured above. I ought to be able to skim something out of the tank.
On another note that was mentioned in an earlier post by Haid, my drain has been reduced down to 3/4" instead of the full 1". I will also fix that this weekend.

[IBASSFSH]

Well its skimming again. I changed the water exit pipe to 1" from 3/4". This made a big difference. I also have the ozone back on. The media reactor is online, and water coming out is measuring zero phospahtes. Tomorrow I will do a 45 gallon water change.
Thanks to all who had input in helping me resolve the skimmer issues.