Micro bubbles and howdo I get rid of them?

[Fireworm]

This past weekend I finally got time to put together all my boxs of aquarium projects. The first one I did, because I thought it would be the simplest, turned out to be a nightmare so far. I bought a Quiet One 4000 from Dr. Foster and Smith for my closed loop and found out that I had an air leak after all of my careful work on it. The first run in the tank with it and I could not see anything but bubbles. After several times of taking out of the tank and tring to tweak it, I am down to getting bubble burps about every 5 or 10 minutes.

I have 1" pvc on everything, and was wondering if this is where some of my problem is coming from. Is the transition from the SCWD's 3/4" to the 1" returns causing my problem? I am at a loss and don't know what else to do. Any suggestions???

 

[chocolateblnt]

Yea I had one of those Q1 pumps that never primed correctly ... good luck!

 

[Fireworm]

Did you have bubbles or was it just noisy?

 

[chocolateblnt]

both actually ...

I ended up not having a closed loop ... if you look at my thread in this forum you'll see I went through 3 pumps with no success. I also made the mistake of putting my intake in the overflow and even though barely any bubbles made it into the intake it would chop them up into a million and hence the vicious bubble cycle.

I followed Melev's CL instructions, especially the priming cap, and it would have probably worked if I put the intake in the tank but I had no room to run a pipe into the tank because of all my rockwork.

I ended up with 2 Seio's ...

 

[chocolateblnt]

Here are some pics ... you can see the intake in the first one with the T that fits a priming cap up top that is pictured in the bottom one. On these pics I was using a Mag 7 after the Q1 ... both Mag 7's leaked.

This is my mistake ... like I said I didn't want to drill another hole and have to relocate my rockwork to fit the intake in the main tank so I tried a CL with it in the drain and it just didn't fly ... Also notice that this was my first CL and I didn't make the priming cap as nice and short as in the first set of pics.

some more pics to ponder over ... w/ the Q1

 

[Fireworm]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8842780#post8842780 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by chocolateblnt
both actually ...

I ended up not having a closed loop ... if you look at my thread in this forum you'll see I went through 3 pumps with no success. I also made the mistake of putting my intake in the overflow and even though barely any bubbles made it into the intake it would chop them up into a million and hence the vicious bubble cycle.

I followed Melev's CL instructions, especially the priming cap, and it would have probably worked if I put the intake in the tank but I had no room to run a pipe into the tank because of all my rockwork.

I ended up with 2 Seio's ...

I followed the same instructions, and as of today I still had the damn bubbles. When I got home this morning I thought I was on the down hill side of the battle. But when I got up this afternoon, I had less amounts shooting out,but it was happening more frequently. I think I am going to try to redo all of it this weekend. I am going to reduce my return lines to 3/4" and add two more to get some more flow behind my rock work. I hope this will help with some of the air. If it doesn't my cousin said he had a couple different pumps we could try out.

 

[macperry]

I have heard that having bubbles in the aquarium is a very bad thing. Could someone help a newbie out and explain why please?

 

[chocolateblnt]

I don't think it hurts anything really ... but if you have sponges the bubbles could stick to the sponge and cause blockage and in turn make them white out ...

a very bad thing is not having enough oxygen in your tank a.k.a. water movement ... you can suffocate all your livestock.

 

[macperry]

Thanks chocolateblnt...I was using the venturi adapter that came with my MJ900 to produce some bubbles along with the water flow. My LFS guy freaked out and said to stop it immediately...the reasoning being that bubbles can cause air to form behind the eyes of many marine fish. What's your opinion on that? You sure don't see any marine aquariums with airstones like in the fresh water world.

 

[Fireworm]

Air behind the eyes???? I ahve never heard of that before. I know that I have not had much time in saltwater, but I have been in tha LFS's for the past twenty years on a weekly basis and I have never heard of that.