Looks like I got a lemon bubble king!!. It Doesn't matter what I do, water sprays from where the air hose enters the wedge pipe.
I really can't believe that a $1400 skimmer would have ANY problems. Seems like the design is wrong on this skimmer. Maybe the cone design isn't correct or the pump isn't the right size...But something doesn't seem right.
My problems so far...
-Foam production SUCKS! It's been 3 weeks, and I thought by now it would be broken in and I would be getting thick nasty skimmate. Guess I was wrong. Maybe I need to wait a couple more weeks, but so far I cannot dial in this skimmer. It's either too little, where I get zero skimmate. Or it's too much, and the skimmate is very light colored.
-water trickling out of the wedge pipe. This is very annoying, I spent a lot of time and money making sure that my sump was silent. Now all I hear is water trickling..sounds like someone is peeing in my sump. I've asked Jeremy and Klaus and neither had a solution that fixed my problem.
-the threaded collection cup leaks. After cleaning my collection cup for the second time, I put everything back together and there was water leaking from the threads. I unscrewed it, and re tightened everything and there is still a little bit of water coming out. I tried cleaning the o ring and making sure it was all aligned, and it still leaks. I'm thinking maybe I just need to tighten it a lot harder, but then getting it off is really hard. Especially IF it ever gets full skimmate. Again, this design seems flawed. My reef octopus had a simple press in collection cup that never leaked once, and it was very simple to take on and off. On the double cone skimmer, the drain hose for the collection cup hits the ozone adapter when unscrewing it....who thought of that?? So u need two hands in there, one to unscrew it and one to hold the hose from getting caught every time it comes around.
After reading this, I'm sure you might think this is my first skimmer, and I'm new to the hobby...but that is not the case. This is not my first skimmer, I've been in the hobby for 5+ years, and have had close to 10 different skimmers. My last skimmer was a super reef octopus xp3000, and that skimmer kicked butt...Best skimmer I've ever owned. Ya it's Chinese, but it worked great and was very easy to adjust. I was gunna buy another SRO skimmer, buy they stopped making the xp5000.
If anybody has a bubble king and has had similar issues, and found a fix...PLEASE let me know what you did to fix it. I have the skimmer sitting in 9" of water right now. I'm wondering if I should try raising it or lowering it to get thicker skimmate? The pump is running at 40w..maybe I need to turn it up or down? Any ideas?
There is so much hype out there that bubble king is the BEST....but after my experience, they seem sub par to the Chinese reef octopus or ATB. Ya the acrylic is shiny and nice, but that doesn't do much in terms of removing fish poo!
Anyways. If I can't get this figured out, my skimmer will be up for sale and I'll be buying an ATB or I'll try to find a used super reef octopus.
