I know a lot of new Red Sea Max owners experience problems with microbubbles in their tanks so, I thought I’d produce this troubleshooting guide based on my experience and that of others to hopefully serve as a point to easily refer anyone who’s experiencing this problem to. There's also an FAQ on Red Sea's web site that provides some guidance on this.
It's quite a l-o-n-g post, so if you're not that interested in the theory, just skip to the summary at the bottom that I've highlighted in red.
This guide really relates to microbubbles that are blown out of the pump outlets on the Max, and not bubbles that sometimes form in the tank itself, covering walls, equipment and live rock. The latter are a natural phenomenon that happen in all tanks and are caused by reactions in the water (such as chemical or temperature changes).
The first thing to say is that although many Max owners experience this problem in one form or another (usually in the early days), In just about every case it can be solved by following the steps in this guide.
There are generally 3 causes of microbubbles in the Max â€"œ trapped air, flow restrictions and protein skimmer “leaksâ€Â.
Trapped Air
When setting up any tank for the first time, or undertaking water changes or anything else that temporarily lowers the water level, air can get trapped in pumps and other equipment when the tank is refilled. With the Max, it is quite easy to get air trapped in the adjustable outlet nozzles, especially if they are pointed downwards. When the pumps are switched on, sometimes the air will get blown out immediately, other times the bubble will be so large that the pump itself will not have any effect and nothing (i.e. no air or water) will come out of the nozzle. Other times, the air bubble may work its way out very slowly in the flow from the pump, bit-by-bit, resulting in microbubbles. Such an air bubble can take a very long time before it is totally blown out of the pump.
The solution for dealing with airlocks is pretty simple. Turn the pump(s) off and re-direct the nozzle upwards. If that doesn’t clear any trapped air, turning the pump back on (with the nozzle still pointing upwards) should do the trick and the nozzle can be re-adjusted to point wherever you want it to. If that fails to clear an air bubble, the nozzle can be removed and gently shaken vertically in the tank before refitting it.
Flow Restrictions
Probably the most common cause of microbubbles in the Max is where the pumps are trying to pump water back into the tank quicker that it is flowing back through the filter area. If you’ve ever accidentally left the pumps running whilst carrying out a water change you’ll have seen this for yourself.
Normally, water is able to flow into and through the filter area as fast as the pumps expel it and this is not a problem. However, there are a number of factors that can restrict the flow which results in the water level in the filter area dropping so far that the pumps start drawing in air as well as water, and mixing it to provide a soda-stream effect in your Max. First, don’t overlook the obvious â€"œ make sure that your water level is high enough and that the filter inlet gate is fully open.
Red Sea provide a lot of filter material in the Max (I’m talking about the large black foam block and the white layer of filter floss). In ideal conditions, this is fine, but the fact is that the purpose of this filter sponge and floss is to trap dirt and debris before it gets to the skimmer and chemical filtration, and it does this a bit too well. Even in a lightly stocked “clean†tank, the sponge and particularly the floss get clogged up with dirt very quickly, and this slows the passage of water through the filter system meaning that the water flow can’t keep up with the demand from the pumps and it’s bubble time again. If you clean the filter sponge and floss regularly (and I mean virtually daily), you can probably prevent this, but I think even the most dedicated marine tank keeper would consider this excessive maintenance. You will find that just about every Max owner on here has done away with the white filter floss and has cut the black foam block in half (horizontally!), only using half of it in the tank. With this setup, you can clean the sponge as part of your regular weekly/fortnightly maintenance schedule without it clogging up too much in the mean time. When the sponge starts to fall apart, you can then use the other half instead. And a free handy hint here â€"œ when that half reaches the end of its life, the Juwel medium-size filter sponges sold in virtually all fish shops for £2-£3 fit perfectly (though don’t get the nitrate-reducing ones, as these are for freshwater only).
The next thing to check if your water level is low in the filter area is for any other obstruction. In early Max’s, the bags provided for the filter material (that go beneath the pumps) were quite rigid, and if not wedged down when put in they would tend to reform to their original tall shape and could block the inlets on the pumps. Newer Max’s have more “floppy†bags, but if you’ve got the old rigid bags I’d consider either changing them for a traditional one from a fish shop, or rolling the loose tops over and then placing them in the Max upside-down to stop them straightening up again.
If you’ve replaced the carbon and bio filtration material in your Max with your own materials, make sure you’ve not put too much in there. A bag of fine carbon and a bag a Rowaphos can be quite a solid obstacle for flowing water.
Protein Skimmer
When it comes to suspecting the skimmer, it’s best to eliminate the obvious issues first. Try turning the skimmer off, give it 30 minutes or so and see if the bubbles stop. Turn it back on, give it another half hour to start working properly again and see if the bubbles return (ignore any that appear during the first half hour, as the skimmer needs a while to "run up"). If they do, then it’s likely (though not definite) that the skimmer’s the culprit.
First thing to do is make sure that the skimmer is properly assembled, and that everything is pushed into place. The large plastic ring on the skimmer pump that connects the inlet to the pump should be blue â€"œ if it’s black then you should contact Red Sea or your local distributor (Interpet in the UK) and ask them for an updated pump.
Before we talk about the protein skimmer causing bubbles in the tank, it’s probably worth covering the basics of how a skimmer works. In (very) simplistic terms, the proteins (i.e. dirt) in water “stick†by surface tension to wherever water meets air. Normally this is the water surface, but this surface tension also exists on the surface of a bubble. One of the effects of all of these proteins sticking to the surface of a bubble is that it makes the bubble stronger and less easy to burst when it reaches the surface of water. This is what causes the scummy foam that you often see at the beach on the waterline. The way a protein skimmer works is by forcing millions of tiny bubbles into the water that’s in the skimmer. As the bubbles rise to the surface, they pick up proteins in the water on the way so by the time the bubbles reach the surface, they don’t burst but mount up on top of each other to climb up the skimmer neck and eventually overflow into the skimmer’s collection cup, taking the proteins with them.
The key thing here to note is that the skimmer needs proteins in the water for it to function correctly. In other words, the water needs to be dirty. If you try skimming using clean water, their will be no proteins to bind with the bubbles, meaning the bubbles will just burst on the surface and won’t be able to climb the skimmer neck. As the bubbles will be much weaker and they can’t escape upwards fast enough, you will probably find some of them escape out of the bottom of the filter and make their way into the tank, causing a veritable snowstorm of microbubbles.
So the point is if your tank is empty or only lightly stocked, the skimmer’s got nothing to do so you’re quite probably going to get bubbles leaking from it into the main part of the tank. If you’re setting up a new tank and have introduced live rock, the skimmer will probably work for a few days or longer, but once the rock has cured and the skimmer’s removed the rubbish that has come off it, there will be very little left to skim. In these cases, I’d simply suggest that you turn the skimmer off for now (it’ll be quieter that way too). Even once the tank has got some initial livestock in, its bio-load may not warrant having the skimmer running all the time â€"œ you could just run it at night or maybe run it for a day every two or three days. The amount of gunk it produces will tell you if it needs to be left on. There’s a lot of reliance placed on protein skimmers, and many will insist that they need to be on at all times. In a well-stocked tank with a full bio-load I would agree, but there’s little point having it turned on when it’s not going to be producing anything, except maybe a tank full of bubbles.
Another thing to bear in mind is that chemicals and greases from plastics can all have an effect on how the skimmer works, and can often cause it to overdo the bubble business. I’ve always found that when I put a brand new filter sponge in the tank, even though I thoroughly rinse it in old tank water first, I have to turn the skimmer off for 24 hours or I get a Max full of bubbles. So if you suddenly start getting bubbles, think if there’s anything new you’ve recently introduced to the tank.
Summary
So, in a nutshell:
1. Make sure the inlet gate is fully open and your water level isn't too low
2. Remove the filter floss and just use half the sponge
3. Check for airlocks in the pump outlets
4. Ensure that nothing is restricting the flow of water through the filter
5. Check that the filter media bags are not being drawn into the pumps
6. Make sure your skimmer pump has a blue ring
7. Don’t run the skimmer all the time on a clean tank
8. Be prepared to turn the skimmer off for a while when adding new synthetic items, such as new filter sponges
9. Don’t despair â€"œ before you know it your bubbles will be a dim and distant memory like they already are for many Max owners (and I’ve yet to hear of anyone losing livestock to the plague of bubbles)
I hope this guide helps overcome an issue that I know can cause a lot of frustration â€"œ if you’re still having problems or you have any other suggestions, please share them here.
It's quite a l-o-n-g post, so if you're not that interested in the theory, just skip to the summary at the bottom that I've highlighted in red.
This guide really relates to microbubbles that are blown out of the pump outlets on the Max, and not bubbles that sometimes form in the tank itself, covering walls, equipment and live rock. The latter are a natural phenomenon that happen in all tanks and are caused by reactions in the water (such as chemical or temperature changes).
The first thing to say is that although many Max owners experience this problem in one form or another (usually in the early days), In just about every case it can be solved by following the steps in this guide.
There are generally 3 causes of microbubbles in the Max â€"œ trapped air, flow restrictions and protein skimmer “leaksâ€Â.
Trapped Air
When setting up any tank for the first time, or undertaking water changes or anything else that temporarily lowers the water level, air can get trapped in pumps and other equipment when the tank is refilled. With the Max, it is quite easy to get air trapped in the adjustable outlet nozzles, especially if they are pointed downwards. When the pumps are switched on, sometimes the air will get blown out immediately, other times the bubble will be so large that the pump itself will not have any effect and nothing (i.e. no air or water) will come out of the nozzle. Other times, the air bubble may work its way out very slowly in the flow from the pump, bit-by-bit, resulting in microbubbles. Such an air bubble can take a very long time before it is totally blown out of the pump.
The solution for dealing with airlocks is pretty simple. Turn the pump(s) off and re-direct the nozzle upwards. If that doesn’t clear any trapped air, turning the pump back on (with the nozzle still pointing upwards) should do the trick and the nozzle can be re-adjusted to point wherever you want it to. If that fails to clear an air bubble, the nozzle can be removed and gently shaken vertically in the tank before refitting it.
Flow Restrictions
Probably the most common cause of microbubbles in the Max is where the pumps are trying to pump water back into the tank quicker that it is flowing back through the filter area. If you’ve ever accidentally left the pumps running whilst carrying out a water change you’ll have seen this for yourself.
Normally, water is able to flow into and through the filter area as fast as the pumps expel it and this is not a problem. However, there are a number of factors that can restrict the flow which results in the water level in the filter area dropping so far that the pumps start drawing in air as well as water, and mixing it to provide a soda-stream effect in your Max. First, don’t overlook the obvious â€"œ make sure that your water level is high enough and that the filter inlet gate is fully open.
Red Sea provide a lot of filter material in the Max (I’m talking about the large black foam block and the white layer of filter floss). In ideal conditions, this is fine, but the fact is that the purpose of this filter sponge and floss is to trap dirt and debris before it gets to the skimmer and chemical filtration, and it does this a bit too well. Even in a lightly stocked “clean†tank, the sponge and particularly the floss get clogged up with dirt very quickly, and this slows the passage of water through the filter system meaning that the water flow can’t keep up with the demand from the pumps and it’s bubble time again. If you clean the filter sponge and floss regularly (and I mean virtually daily), you can probably prevent this, but I think even the most dedicated marine tank keeper would consider this excessive maintenance. You will find that just about every Max owner on here has done away with the white filter floss and has cut the black foam block in half (horizontally!), only using half of it in the tank. With this setup, you can clean the sponge as part of your regular weekly/fortnightly maintenance schedule without it clogging up too much in the mean time. When the sponge starts to fall apart, you can then use the other half instead. And a free handy hint here â€"œ when that half reaches the end of its life, the Juwel medium-size filter sponges sold in virtually all fish shops for £2-£3 fit perfectly (though don’t get the nitrate-reducing ones, as these are for freshwater only).
The next thing to check if your water level is low in the filter area is for any other obstruction. In early Max’s, the bags provided for the filter material (that go beneath the pumps) were quite rigid, and if not wedged down when put in they would tend to reform to their original tall shape and could block the inlets on the pumps. Newer Max’s have more “floppy†bags, but if you’ve got the old rigid bags I’d consider either changing them for a traditional one from a fish shop, or rolling the loose tops over and then placing them in the Max upside-down to stop them straightening up again.
If you’ve replaced the carbon and bio filtration material in your Max with your own materials, make sure you’ve not put too much in there. A bag of fine carbon and a bag a Rowaphos can be quite a solid obstacle for flowing water.
Protein Skimmer
When it comes to suspecting the skimmer, it’s best to eliminate the obvious issues first. Try turning the skimmer off, give it 30 minutes or so and see if the bubbles stop. Turn it back on, give it another half hour to start working properly again and see if the bubbles return (ignore any that appear during the first half hour, as the skimmer needs a while to "run up"). If they do, then it’s likely (though not definite) that the skimmer’s the culprit.
First thing to do is make sure that the skimmer is properly assembled, and that everything is pushed into place. The large plastic ring on the skimmer pump that connects the inlet to the pump should be blue â€"œ if it’s black then you should contact Red Sea or your local distributor (Interpet in the UK) and ask them for an updated pump.
Before we talk about the protein skimmer causing bubbles in the tank, it’s probably worth covering the basics of how a skimmer works. In (very) simplistic terms, the proteins (i.e. dirt) in water “stick†by surface tension to wherever water meets air. Normally this is the water surface, but this surface tension also exists on the surface of a bubble. One of the effects of all of these proteins sticking to the surface of a bubble is that it makes the bubble stronger and less easy to burst when it reaches the surface of water. This is what causes the scummy foam that you often see at the beach on the waterline. The way a protein skimmer works is by forcing millions of tiny bubbles into the water that’s in the skimmer. As the bubbles rise to the surface, they pick up proteins in the water on the way so by the time the bubbles reach the surface, they don’t burst but mount up on top of each other to climb up the skimmer neck and eventually overflow into the skimmer’s collection cup, taking the proteins with them.
The key thing here to note is that the skimmer needs proteins in the water for it to function correctly. In other words, the water needs to be dirty. If you try skimming using clean water, their will be no proteins to bind with the bubbles, meaning the bubbles will just burst on the surface and won’t be able to climb the skimmer neck. As the bubbles will be much weaker and they can’t escape upwards fast enough, you will probably find some of them escape out of the bottom of the filter and make their way into the tank, causing a veritable snowstorm of microbubbles.
So the point is if your tank is empty or only lightly stocked, the skimmer’s got nothing to do so you’re quite probably going to get bubbles leaking from it into the main part of the tank. If you’re setting up a new tank and have introduced live rock, the skimmer will probably work for a few days or longer, but once the rock has cured and the skimmer’s removed the rubbish that has come off it, there will be very little left to skim. In these cases, I’d simply suggest that you turn the skimmer off for now (it’ll be quieter that way too). Even once the tank has got some initial livestock in, its bio-load may not warrant having the skimmer running all the time â€"œ you could just run it at night or maybe run it for a day every two or three days. The amount of gunk it produces will tell you if it needs to be left on. There’s a lot of reliance placed on protein skimmers, and many will insist that they need to be on at all times. In a well-stocked tank with a full bio-load I would agree, but there’s little point having it turned on when it’s not going to be producing anything, except maybe a tank full of bubbles.
Another thing to bear in mind is that chemicals and greases from plastics can all have an effect on how the skimmer works, and can often cause it to overdo the bubble business. I’ve always found that when I put a brand new filter sponge in the tank, even though I thoroughly rinse it in old tank water first, I have to turn the skimmer off for 24 hours or I get a Max full of bubbles. So if you suddenly start getting bubbles, think if there’s anything new you’ve recently introduced to the tank.
Summary
So, in a nutshell:
1. Make sure the inlet gate is fully open and your water level isn't too low
2. Remove the filter floss and just use half the sponge
3. Check for airlocks in the pump outlets
4. Ensure that nothing is restricting the flow of water through the filter
5. Check that the filter media bags are not being drawn into the pumps
6. Make sure your skimmer pump has a blue ring
7. Don’t run the skimmer all the time on a clean tank
8. Be prepared to turn the skimmer off for a while when adding new synthetic items, such as new filter sponges
9. Don’t despair â€"œ before you know it your bubbles will be a dim and distant memory like they already are for many Max owners (and I’ve yet to hear of anyone losing livestock to the plague of bubbles)
I hope this guide helps overcome an issue that I know can cause a lot of frustration â€"œ if you’re still having problems or you have any other suggestions, please share them here.
