Comments invited: Why do some really good skimmers have seemingly random overflow?

[Arego]

On my main 250g I run an omega vertex 200i and if I'm not using socks it will occasionally overflow.. something like a couple times a week. If I am using socks it absolutely never overflows, at least not on it's own without me having done something on purpose.

The 40g frag tank not connected to the DT has a RO 110i and I've never encountered an overflow regardless of reason with it. I should note that I also ran it alongside my vertex while I was waiting for the frag tank to come online and the reef octopus still never overflowed even when the vertex did.. weird.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Not really. the total amount of waste and food intake is fairly constant. Only change when something large spawned.
I know that in my two system, things don't spawn at the same time result in overflow at the same time.

i expect the answer is "simply" more or less surfactants or hydrophobic particulates present in the water. I know that's not satisfying as it is nearly a truism, but in a complex environment (which includes your home air variability from cooking and others organics in the air), I do not see a reason to think it would be stable in the first place.

A fish easts something different than usual. A worm comes across some gunk it eats and excretes more surfactants. Or it regurgitates. An organism releases an organic compound defense mechanism. So many possibilities...

 

[Rick.45cal]

I see a common factor in some of these posts, and I too suffer from it. I have a Vertex Alpha 250 skimmer, and it’s great, except every once in a blue moon the rubber o-ring that helps seat the impeller assembly slips out of it’s intended position, pushing the needle wheel and impeller a fraction of an inch out of the motor body, and the thing goes absolutely hyperactive and just pushes an insane amount of air into the skimmer causing it to overflow... bucket loads.

I love the skimmer, but it’s not 100% trustworthy.

I realize this post doesn’t address Orions different skimmers in different locations doing it simultaneously, but I thought I‘d mention this behavior for the fellow Vertex users in this thread.

edited to add: other than this happening maybe 3 times in the 5 years I’ve used it, mine is pretty much been set and forget.

 

[OrionN]

i expect the answer is "simply" more or less surfactants or hydrophobic particulates present in the water. I know that's not satisfying as it is nearly a truism, but in a complex environment (which includes your home air variability from cooking and others organics in the air), I do not see a reason to think it would be stable in the first place.

A fish easts something different than usual. A worm comes across some gunk it eats and excretes more surfactants. Or it regurgitates. An organism releases an organic compound defense mechanism. So many possibilities...

I used both of these skimmer for the last 10 years. I know both of them well and really think they are great skimmer. I forever put these overflow to just random events due to tank changes. However for the last several years, I invariably have this happen at the same time in my office and home. Only enough of these events happen together that cause me to think of common thing that happen to both system.

Once I home in to find the common thing that happened to both systems, the weather is the obvious reason. I actually though of this for a few times and expected this overflow to happen to try to validated my point. Once I see my home skimmer overflowed Friday night, I KNOW my office tank skimmer overflowed also.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I used both of these skimmer for the last 10 years. I know both of them well and really think they are great skimmer. I forever put these overflow to just random events due to tank changes. However for the last several years, I invariably have this happen at the same time in my office and home. Only enough of these events happen together that cause me to think of common thing that happen to both system.

Once I home in to find the common thing that happened to both systems, the weather is the obvious reason. I actually though of this for a few times and expected this overflow to happen to try to validated my point. Once I see my home skimmer overflowed Friday night, I KNOW my office tank skimmer overflowed also.

Weather can impact reef aquaria in a few ways.

1. Humidity can impact evaporation which can impact dosing if it is tied to an ATO.
2. Both wind and the inside to outside temperature differential impacts flow of air through a home with basically closed windows, and that air turnover will impact pH and may impact organics in the air that get driven into the water.
3. Air pressure may impact bubble formation and foam formation and drainage in a skimmer, but I think it is beyond simplistic rationalization exactly how that happens for any given skimmer or even what direction it will impact foam formation. It's at least beyond my ability to see the exact effect.

Maybe it's not the weather, but something about you. lol After shave lotion, hand lotion, body odor, etc.

Or coincidence:

Luckiest Man On The Planet Wins Lottery 3 Times In 3 Weeks

Luckiest Man On The Planet Wins Lottery 3 Times In 3 Weeks

www.huffpost.com

Perhaps his first thought was, every time I eat broccoli I win!

 

[ca1ore]

The only thing in the weather that affect my tank is the barometric pressure. Higher barometric pressure result in more air intake by the skimmer. The increase in air intake result in more wet skim-mate and overflow of the skim-mate reservoir.

Hmmn, but wouldn't barometric pressure affect both ends, equally. In other words, increased barometric pressure would affect the intake and output equally with no net affect. I see no causative link with weather and skimmer performance chez moi ..... not even correlation.

 

[Smirkish]

No, humidity will not impact skimming.

Thank you for responding. I was just reading one of your articles on ozone, this morning.

What about the Tunze USA 9410 DOC, for instance, though? It’s needle wheel pump only draws in humid air, because of how they designed it, which helps to prevent clogging. Clogging can have a big impact on skim. I’m not arguing with you, just curious.

 

[OrionN]

Weather can impact reef aquaria in a few ways.

1. Humidity can impact evaporation which can impact dosing if it is tied to an ATO.
2. Both wind and the inside to outside temperature differential impacts flow of air through a home with basically closed windows, and that air turnover will impact pH and may impact organics in the air that get driven into the water.
3. Air pressure may impact bubble formation and foam formation and drainage in a skimmer, but I think it is beyond simplistic rationalization exactly how that happens for any given skimmer or even what direction it will impact foam formation. It's at least beyond my ability to see the exact effect.

Maybe it's not the weather, but something about you. lol After shave lotion, hand lotion, body odor, etc.

Or coincidence:

Luckiest Man On The Planet Wins Lottery 3 Times In 3 Weeks

Luckiest Man On The Planet Wins Lottery 3 Times In 3 Weeks

www.huffpost.com

Perhaps his first thought was, every time I eat broccoli I win!

Randy, I already considered all of the points above.

Hmmn, but wouldn't barometric pressure affect both ends, equally. In other words, increased barometric pressure would affect the intake and output equally with no net affect. I see no causative link with weather and skimmer performance chez moi ..... not even correlation.

It is true that increase pressure would affect both side, I suspect that the venturi effect (what result the suction of air into the pin wheel in the pump) depends of the velocity of the fluid/pin wheel much more and not affect as much by the pressure on the output side while the intake side it is much more affected by the pressure.

If you feel like it, just test my hypothesis. That is what I post this thread for. The most important thing is to set your skimmer to put out somewhat liquid skim-mate and see if this change with change in barometric pressure.

 

[ReefPiracy]

I find any debris in pin wheel or venture affect this. Other wise hands in tank or feeding always can change skimmer level. I always dial back gate if it overflows or seems at times to be skimming different. Maybe ph of tank??

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thank you for responding. I was just reading one of your articles on ozone, this morning.

What about the Tunze USA 9410 DOC, for instance, though? It’s needle wheel pump only draws in humid air, because of how they designed it, which helps to prevent clogging. Clogging can have a big impact on skim. I’m not arguing with you, just curious.

I never had a skimmer clog its air intake ( I used and ETS 800 gemini downdraft skimmer for many years), but if you have a model that clogs then the humidity might impact how fast it clogs.

But the skimming action would not go up or down with humidity, just the one way rate of progression toward a clogged input.

 

[OrionN]

I find any debris in pin wheel or venture affect this. Other wise hands in tank or feeding always can change skimmer level. I always dial back gate if it overflows or seems at times to be skimming different. Maybe ph of tank??

These should be classified as predictable/known causes of change in skimmer functions.

 

[Dan_P]

Does anyone not have this problem sometime? IMO, this happened very often. We all attributed this to something happened to our tank or something happened to the skimmer. Either something spawned, certain thing got added though food that increase the surfactants of the water, increase nutrient of some kind...... Essentially changing in the water of the tank resulting in great increase in skimmer output. The other major causes is change in the skimmer, mainly accidental increase in obstruction of the air intake, or increase in resistant to the water outflow of the skimmers, or sudden increase in pump outflow. Below are quotes of some recent explainations when I did search on skimmer overflow.

While this explained a lot of the skimmer overflow episodes, these explanations do not account for all the events in my systems. I have two systems running, one in the office using an Octopus 200INT and on at home using the Vertex Alpha. Both are great skimmers. Both work really well. I set the skim-mate thin and they extracted a lot of nutrients from my tanks. The problem with setting this thin output if frequently, I would have "random" skimmer overflow and dump a bunch of nutrient back into my tanks. Invariably, when this happened to one system, it happened to the other system although my maintenance cycle, and feeding is different. I only feed dry food, automatic to the office tank while the I added all kinds of thing to the home tank. A lot of foods and other things I added to the home tank will cause much predictable increase in skimmer out put.

There are always these overflow that seem to come right out of the blue, which happened to both tanks at the same time. I essentially rule out sudden change in the tank water as cause for these episodes. Today, this happen again in my home tank. Nothing change in maintenance or feeding. I need to go up to the office and empty the skimmate container, and re-set the skimmer again. Over the next few days, they skimmers will pullout the nutrients it spill into the system. While it could be that one of my large animals spawned, I kinda doubt it.

I think I know the cause for these overflow episodes. It is really simple really but something that eluded me for the longest time until now.
Please comments regarding this problem. I will follow up and reveal my thoughts on this later today

When you set the skimmer to “wet” skimming or “thin” you create the situation where small changes in conditions will result in a high output of foam. Here are some examples that can push wet skimming to very wet skimming.

Pump motor increase. A small increase in air or water height will result in run away skimming. I have separate controls on both and have observed how a small water level change or increase in air can cause wet skimming to overflow. I have also measured foam output over several days and found that my air pump has a short cycle of varying air flow that gives a variation in foam output. This would only be detectable with wet skimming.

Changes in the water. When the light over my algae scrubber comes on, the skimmer foam rate begins to increase. When wet skimming, slight changes to water chemistry can result in foam flow while wet skimming.

Cleaning the skimmer throat can slow the foam rate for awhile and then bang, it’s overflowing.

With so many variables requiring only small changes to cause a runaway skimmer, it is highly likely to see a runaway production of foam when wet skimming.

 

[TexanCanuck]

I occasionally use Seachem Stress Guard (when adding new fish to help with stress from shipping, or if a fish gets beat up by my evil Yellow Tang), and notice that it makes my skimmer overflo every time! The same goes for Seachem Paragard.

In the past, I have noticed my skimmer going crazy if I’ve had my hands/arms in the tank for any extended period of time (I.e. trying to catch my evil Yellow Tang), especially if I forget to rinse my hands well before I put them in the tank. I assume this comes from the oil on my skin.

In both cases, I’m assuming the root cause here is what Randy refers to earlier as “any additive which changes surface tension”

 

[dactylo]

Power quality. For example voltage variation was causing my skimmer pump power consumption increase from 50 W at 116 V, up to 56 Watts at 122 Volts. I realized this using the Apex power monitoring. At 122 V and 56 Watts, the skimmer was pushing more water, rising and overflowing.

I had to change that skimmer and the new one changes from 67 Watts to 71 Watts, still affecting the skimmate but not overflowing.

The attached image is just to illustrate the correlation between voltage and watts consumed by the skimmer.

 

[drblank1]

Power quality. For example voltage variation was causing my skimmer pump power consumption increase from 50 W at 116 V, up to 56 Watts at 122 Volts. I realized this using the Apex power monitoring. At 122 V and 56 Watts, the skimmer was pushing more water, rising and overflowing.

I had to change that skimmer and the new one changes from 67 Watts to 71 Watts, still affecting the skimmate but not overflowing.

The attached image is just to illustrate the correlation between voltage and watts consumed by the skimmer.

I can see this being a valid issues. But most likely, his home and office are on different power grids.

 

[piranhaman00]

I used to use needle wheel skimmers and had this happen, since swithcing to true venturi, I no longer have random overflow nor any adjusting.

 

[UK softy bloke]

Does anyone not have this problem sometime? IMO, this happened very often. We all attributed this to something happened to our tank or something happened to the skimmer. Either something spawned, certain thing got added though food that increase the surfactants of the water, increase nutrient of some kind...... Essentially changing in the water of the tank resulting in great increase in skimmer output. The other major causes is change in the skimmer, mainly accidental increase in obstruction of the air intake, or increase in resistant to the water outflow of the skimmers, or sudden increase in pump outflow. Below are quotes of some recent explainations when I did search on skimmer overflow.

While this explained a lot of the skimmer overflow episodes, these explanations do not account for all the events in my systems. I have two systems running, one in the office using an Octopus 200INT and on at home using the Vertex Alpha. Both are great skimmers. Both work really well. I set the skim-mate thin and they extracted a lot of nutrients from my tanks. The problem with setting this thin output if frequently, I would have "random" skimmer overflow and dump a bunch of nutrient back into my tanks. Invariably, when this happened to one system, it happened to the other system although my maintenance cycle, and feeding is different. I only feed dry food, automatic to the office tank while the I added all kinds of thing to the home tank. A lot of foods and other things I added to the home tank will cause much predictable increase in skimmer out put.

There are always these overflow that seem to come right out of the blue, which happened to both tanks at the same time. I essentially rule out sudden change in the tank water as cause for these episodes. Today, this happen again in my home tank. Nothing change in maintenance or feeding. I need to go up to the office and empty the skimmate container, and re-set the skimmer again. Over the next few days, they skimmers will pullout the nutrients it spill into the system. While it could be that one of my large animals spawned, I kinda doubt it.

I think I know the cause for these overflow episodes. It is really simple really but something that eluded me for the longest time until now.
Please comments regarding this problem. I will follow up and reveal my thoughts on this later today

I find that changing the filter wool in my external filter makes my tunze 9012 go nuts. I soak the wool in hot water and agitate it to remove the starch which helps somewhat.

 

[zachtos]

Power quality. For example voltage variation was causing my skimmer pump power consumption increase from 50 W at 116 V, up to 56 Watts at 122 Volts. I realized this using the Apex power monitoring. At 122 V and 56 Watts, the skimmer was pushing more water, rising and overflowing.

I had to change that skimmer and the new one changes from 67 Watts to 71 Watts, still affecting the skimmate but not overflowing.

The attached image is just to illustrate the correlation between voltage and watts consumed by the skimmer.

A lot of pumps are regulated down to DC nowadays, so the output waveform will be almost completely the same, unless of a major brownout.

 

[zachtos]

I've never solved this in 20+ years, multiple tanks and skimmers. I can only rely on my Algal Turf Scrubbers now. Too much variability in my skimmer, one day it's fine, next day it filled up a 5G bucket, causing more harm then good.

 

[sgrosenb]

I have a Bubble King that has been dialed in for months. I have a very stable tank and didnt do anything differently for many months; the skimmer was perfect during that time. In the past week I started dosing Tropic Marin Elimi NP (very small doses - 1ml in my 165g setup every other day for 3 days). A few days after my 3rd dose, my skimmer went nuts. I have to believe it was the Elimi NP? its the only variable I changed in months. Would that make sense @Randy Holmes-Farley ?