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

[OrionN]

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

Anything that adds surfactants (such as soaps or detergents, whether natural or synthetic) to the water will cause excessive foaming.

Certain brands of coral putty (looking at you, CoralCrete!) are hell for skimmers. I made the mistake of using CoralCrete in my tank... it took three water changes + letting 3+ gallons of skimmate flow out into a bucket before it stopped overflowing. Even now, whenever anything disturbs the CoralCrete, the skimmer will overflow for another week or more.

Things added with really high nutrients can cause it too.

The only time mine overflows is from something added to the water. Chemicals like Chemiclean or Fluconazole always cause overflows. Another thing that's caused it in my tank is Banded Trochus snails spawning.

Run a Bubble King over here and it stays dialed in like a home's central heat and air.

If the skimmer is a good one and broke in.

Three things come to mind:
1) Chemiclean
2) Coral putty
3) The water level changing up and down around a skimmer

I find that some of my foods will trigger an overflow. Flake food and amino acids cause my skimmer to overflow. Some times other events like a change in water level, a short power outage or return pump outage can cause a temporary overflow.

From my experience. Skimmers that have the water outlet higher up on the skimmer are less prone to overflow. I find that most modern skimmers that have the ultra compact water adjustments built into the bottom of the skimmer can be much less stable.

Could be a clogged air intake.

On my Nyos 120 skimmer, the plate that causes the bubbles to vortex is held in place by friction. Every few months the plate migrates up the post and detaches, causing the bubble to shoot straight up and overflow the cup. It is the first thing I check now.

maybe all your tank organism have synchronized their pooping schedules. :)

You could inject some RO into the air intake line. That will dissolve any blockage in the Venturi.

 

[OrionN]

No one want to comment on this? I find that this is such an annoying problem.
@ReefSquad ?

 

[BeltedCoyote]

I wish I knew why. Didn’t want to comment because I don’t have anything worthwhile to add. That said, I’m looking forward to what comes out of this topic

 

[OrionN]

I went to the office, sure enough, the skimmer there is overflowed too.
Now that I think of it, the answer is somewhat simple. Yesterday it was wet and rainy. Today the sky is all blue and clear, a perfect day with higher barometric pressure.
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.

I think I ID one of my mysterious cause of skimmer overflow. I will keep information of when this happen in the future and will most likely confirm this. For those whorun wet skimmate, using needle wheel skimmer pumps, please help confirm this hypothesis of mine.

 

[minus9]

Just now catching this thread and will keep an eye on my skimmer. I notice the opposite happening, less skimming and reduced bubble height, but it may be the same issue/cause, but different result? Deltec 600i on my 90g.

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Most below the body pump impellar style skimmers build up a sludge in the neck or foam head area. This closes the diameter or circumfrance of the neck. Impeding the upflow of the foam head.
If ur skimmer is constantly overflowing, you have it set to heigh. The nutrient foam or head foam gets thicker and thicker and falls on itself.
The idea being the lighter foam below pushes it up.
You want to set skimmers lower and let the build up. They work off nutrient build up. Why its not constant. The parameters in ur water are not constant either. My .02
D

 

[Salty Rambler]

I've similarly been wondering if the weather was impacting my skimmer somehow. Will be curious to see if you can track it long enough to determine whether it is causal or coincidental.

 

[Timfish]

All the biology in a ecosysyem is in a constant state of flux and reef ecosystems are arguably the most complex. Why do you expect everything to stay the same day in and day out?

 

[OrionN]

Both the Octopus 200INT and the Alpha Vertex 200 have mechanism to increase the out flow resistant to set the water level. I set it at certain level, by increase or decrease the water outflow resistant.
I do set it to get a fairly wet skim-mate so when the air intake increase, this result in increase skim-mate and overflow of the skimmer.

 

[OrionN]

All the biology in a ecosysyem is in a constant state of flux and reef ecosystems are arguably the most complex. Why do you expect everything to stay the same day in and day out?

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.

 

[JaimeAdams]

Mine goes crazy all of the time.

 

[Smirkish]

I was actually going to suggest it was weather related, but I was wondering if it had to do with the humidity in the air. Humid air would also result in more wet skim, no?

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

My house stays usually around the same temp and humidity i think but idk ive never monitored my houses humidity. Lol
D

 

[Gtinnel]

I have a vertex omega 180i that is a great skimmer except it will periodically overflow for what seems like no reason. I have an outside air intake and it never dawned on me to look at the weather and see if there is a correlation.

 

[Smirkish]

Humidity affects evaporation with the same principle. Evaporative chillers use this principle to cool tanks. The fans move the air saturated with water particles away from the tank, so the water evaporates faster, cooling the tank. This is called phase change.

It just seemed that if your humidity increases, the air you are drawing into the unit through the intake will already contain more moisture than normal, and this would result in more wet skim vs darker/thicker skim from uptake of nutrients. I don’t know, that’s just my take on it.

 

[OrionN]

I think we control humidity and temperature very well with our AC/Heater but the atmospheric pressure changes with time. We ourself cannot sense the atmospheric pressure so we tend to not pay attention to it.

 

[OrionN]

I never ever suggest that this is THE ONLY REASON skimmer overflow. Once you rule out changes in the water chemistry/nutrient and rule out unintentional changes in your skimmer. What other cause is in the unknown basket before. I suggesting that change in Barometric pressure change can explain these episodes

 

[Big E]

I never ever suggest that this is THE ONLY REASON skimmer overflow. Once you rule out changes in the water chemistry/nutrient and rule out unintentional changes in your skimmer. What other cause is in the unknown basket before. I suggesting that change in Barometric pressure change can explain these episodes

I've always thought barometric pressure can be an issue but only on skimmers that don't match up well with bubble creation & flow. Skimmers that have adjustments set wrong or just have a poor match between pump and flow are most likely to have issues.

If a skimmer is designed right with a matching pump there will seldom be problems. I can count on one hand the number of times my Amaxx ConeS 3 has had random overflows in almost 8 years of use.

There are brands and models I avoid due random overflow issues. Some of these skimmers are very finicky especially with water levels or air flow.

 

[R33fDaddy]

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

If we want to rule out something in your tank or that someone is not spraying air freshener or something in the vicinity of your tank. Then I'll have to go with, your skimmer is sitting to deep in your sump. Even if you skimmer starts to randomly skim like crazy it shouldn't be to the point where it's dumping stuff back into your sump. Have you tried raising your skimmer?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I was actually going to suggest it was weather related, but I was wondering if it had to do with the humidity in the air. Humid air would also result in more wet skim, no?

No, humidity will not impact skimming.