Squille Bonjour mon ami and
to Reef Central and our RSM Club! I only have the Pinpoint Wireless thermometer, not the pH monitor. I use a hand held digital pH meter for pH testing - about $20 USD on Ebay. I'm very pleased with the accuracy of the Pinpoint thermometer - it's very close to a laboratory grade glass/mercury thermometer. I have two Pinpoint probes, one for the RSM and one for a small 9g tank, and I can read the temperatures for both on the one wireless bass while sitting on the couch in the family room. Good luck with your RSM - if you can post any pictures that would be great!
DontXtripNfall - Somewhere these's a pdf file from Red Sea with microbubble causes, but I'm not sure if it's on the Red Sea site or not. Here's a list I put together a while back that may, or may not help:
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In an established tank that all of a sudden starts producing LOTS of microbubbles:
Where's the water level in the pump chamber when this happens? Something may be cutting the flow in back. The usual cause is something cutting flow through the back, or something cutting flow through the gate - when the water level in the pump chamber drops well below the top of the 2 pumps they will produce lots of microbubbles, or even a "whiteout" of bubbles in the tank.
Possible causes:
1) Plugged up filter pad/sponge. You may also have too thick a black sponge. It's oten helped to cut that black sponge thickness to 1-2 inches thick, instead of the original thickness supplied with the tank.
2) If you've got media under the pumps - the media or the bags that it's in may be getting plugged up with detritus, cutting flow. Remove, rinse in SW or replace.
3) If you have media above the skimmer pump, or even on the left side of the skimmer, especially a fine grained media like Chemi-Pure, these types of media can compact after a while and cut flow. Or. the bags get plugged up with detritus.
4) Also - see if you can get a finger under the pumps to be sure that plate on the bottom hasn't come loose. Some owners have tied 12 inch cable ties around each of the pumps to ensure that fitting can't become dislodged or fall off.
5) If running a cannister filter, shake it back & forth several times to release entrapped air at the top. If the cannister has entrapped air you'll often see periodic bursts of microbubbles as this entrapped air is released periodically, and is chewed up by the pump impellers into microbubbles.
6) Is anything blocking the overflow gate? Something like a starfish or anemone can crawl over the gate, cutting flow, starving the pumps, and creating a whiteout of bubbles in the tank. If the gate is covered with a thick algae growth the same blockage could occur.
7) Is the gate pushed down all the way? If the gate is raised up too much it won't let enough water through to the back.
8) Skimmer problem - totally different issues. If the microbubbles are an "all of a sudden" occurrence, after not having many for a while, it's probably one of the above causes. In newly set up tanks, microbubbles from the skimmer should be expected for a while, till the skimmer breaks in, and bio-load is built up in the tank.
Hope that helps. If anyone has a link to the microbubble troubleshooting pages from Red Sea please post it.
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Another big storm passed over me again tonight. One lightning strike was so close that it somehow tripped the GFCI that my tank is on. At first I thought all power was off, but then I figured out that all that was needed was to reset the GFCI and all the tank equipment came back on (sigh of relief!). Other than that my kitchen wall phone is now dead. All of the other phones are OK - and the PCs, etc. are OK. Some tree branches are down on my street, but nothing major that I can see. Lightening can do strange things! I've enough of bad storms for a while!
