Royal-Exclusiv / Vertex Cone Skimmer Club

[Jeremy B.]

Hi John, in my opinion you do not "need" the adjustable nozzle. It's nice to have it, but once it's set you'll probably never mess with it again. I'd say just find the sweet spot of what you're doing now and mark it / leave it there.

 

[reefknight]

Just joined the club with an Alpha 200 on my 185gal display and 50gal'ish sump. Total water volume is around 210gal. Set it up Sunday night and by Monday morning it had a half inch or so of dark olive green skimmate. :thumbsup:

 

[Beenalongtime79]

What's the smallest tank size or volume that people have been skimming w/ the alpha 200?

I think I may have one of the smallest... Main display of 80 gallons (rimless 48x24x16), sump of roughly 40 gallons.... so maybe roughly 100-110 gallons total system volume.

Seems like, everybody is placing them on tanks w/ twice the system volume. I still get great skimmate and my tank is bloody clean.... It takes roughly 2 weeks to get even a light dusting of algae on the tank glass and I have almost no nuisance algae and my corals are about as pastel as you can get. I have to feed vigorously to make sure the water isn't too nutrient poor!

I do throttle the skimmer down quite a bit though.

Cheers,
John

 

[Allmost]

keep up wit the water changes, or dosing elements, to not deplete them too much.

I leave my skimmer off for about 2 hours a day to give my SPS more intense colors, I run mine on 150 G of net water, and as u said, it pulls EVERYthing out lol

[prety good option to have ]

 

[Beenalongtime79]

keep up wit the water changes, or dosing elements, to not deplete them too much.

I leave my skimmer off for about 2 hours a day to give my SPS more intense colors, I run mine on 150 G of net water, and as u said, it pulls EVERYthing out lol

[prety good option to have ]

Noted, I definitely add back trace elements and run a calcium reactor so I hope they don't get too deplete.

I have thought about stopping the skimmer for short periods of time, but I think I am just hung up on running it the whole time. Haha. I should really consider it though as my corals are quite light colored.

Cheers!
John

 

[OG Reefs]

Hey Jeremy,
Just wondering if there was a way I can order and extra collection cup lid for my Alpha 200.

Thanks
Ev'e

 

[Jeremy B.]

Hi, we can special order it in for you, but I do not have any here right now, I apologize.

 

[Allmost]

Question, do you guys take out the RD pump and run it in vinegar or anything ? or do they not need cleaning ? what are your maintanance like ?

 

[jkopp36]

Hi Jeremy,

I'm struggling with my AC 200 on a 180g FOWLR I am setting up. I was using it on another tank up until about 3 months ago and it worked fine. Now, on this new setup it outputs tons of microbubbles and overflows within a few minutes of being turned on.

I read in other posts where you mentioned that there may be a reaction with something such as epoxy. I did do a foam/rock wall on the entire back of the 180g then sealed and attached sand to the foam using West Systems two-part epoxy. Could this be the problem and if so what do I do? I've been running the skimmer as is with the collection cup drain uncorked and running carbon in a reactor hoping it would help but it is not getting better. I may move it over to another tank just to see what happens too. Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.

-Jeff

BTW, skimmer is in 9" of water and the output is wide open right now.

 

[Beenalongtime79]

Hi Jeremy,

I'm struggling with my AC 200 on a 180g FOWLR I am setting up. I was using it on another tank up until about 3 months ago and it worked fine. Now, on this new setup it outputs tons of microbubbles and overflows within a few minutes of being turned on.

I read in other posts where you mentioned that there may be a reaction with something such as epoxy. I did do a foam/rock wall on the entire back of the 180g then sealed and attached sand to the foam using West Systems two-part epoxy. Could this be the problem and if so what do I do? I've been running the skimmer as is with the collection cup drain uncorked and running carbon in a reactor hoping it would help but it is not getting better. I may move it over to another tank just to see what happens too. Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.

-Jeff

BTW, skimmer is in 9" of water and the output is wide open right now.

Is this a completely new tank without any fish in it?

Also, what you can do is let place something under the skimmer and push it even further out of the water, think 5" and just leave the output valve wide open and see if you can skim some stuff out without it overflowing... eventually after awhile it will come down.

If you ever dump a ton of skimmate into a very clean tank, a good skimmer will actually go nuts as it tries to quickly remove all those nasty organics, but this often leads to overflows.... so, if this ever happens, then you need to really raise that sucker out of water or decrease the amount of bubbles injected to let the skimmer slowly take out the organic loaded water.

Hope you figure it out!
John

 

[jkopp36]

Is this a completely new tank without any fish in it?

Also, what you can do is let place something under the skimmer and push it even further out of the water, think 5" and just leave the output valve wide open and see if you can skim some stuff out without it overflowing... eventually after awhile it will come down.

If you ever dump a ton of skimmate into a very clean tank, a good skimmer will actually go nuts as it tries to quickly remove all those nasty organics, but this often leads to overflows.... so, if this ever happens, then you need to really raise that sucker out of water or decrease the amount of bubbles injected to let the skimmer slowly take out the organic loaded water.

Hope you figure it out!
John

That's a good suggestion John and I'll try it. Thining back, I originally had the skimmer in about 7.5" of water and moved it up to 9" after reading through this thread. It actually seems worse now so I think you're onto something. I'll build another taller stand and move it to 5" to see what happens.

The tank is a new setup with about 150lbs of well established live rock - no fish yet. I'm still trying to get a cycle out of it but that may not happen. The rock came straight from another setup and only saw air between the old tank and bucket and between the bucket and new tank - 30 seconds max. FYI.

Thanks for the input!

 

[Jeremy B.]

There has to be a reason it's spewing out bubbles. The two most common problems are are a reaction to something in the water, or a restriction of air going into the skimmer. I would suggest keeping the skimmer in 8.5" - 9" of water, and then cleaning out the venturi, airline, and the silencer. You need to take the silencer completely apart to do this. See if this helps at all.

 

[jkopp36]

There has to be a reason it's spewing out bubbles. The two most common problems are are a reaction to something in the water, or a restriction of air going into the skimmer. I would suggest keeping the skimmer in 8.5" - 9" of water, and then cleaning out the venturi, airline, and the silencer. You need to take the silencer completely apart to do this. See if this helps at all.

I completely disassembled the entire skimmer including the silencer and cleaned it Jeremy. It actually was in great shape before I did so. The amount of bubbles coming out of the output is HUGE. I've never ran into this with any of my skimmers. I'm going to move it over to another tank this weekend and see what happens before putting a taller stand together. Thanks for the reply!

 

[jkopp36]

Well, I switched the simmer over to another tank and it did the same thing. After "playing" with things, I noticed that if I restricted the intake of the pump partially it would clear things up. So, I switched the intake tube thingy (what's that called again?) out for the smaller diameter one and put the skimmer back on the 180g FOWLR. It's now running pretty good. I'll give it some time to break in and dial it in and we'll see how it goes.

Thanks again for all the input from everyone!

 

[reefknight]

Ok, I'm starting to have a lot of fluctuation in production of skimmate now. I have checked the cup and barely had any in there, run out to do an errand and come back in a couple of hours to find the cup half full of "green tea". Not what I want at all. Bubbles are up and into the neck. Settings are as follows; nozzle 2 turns out, 8 1/4" water depth, pipe at full open. If I reduce the pipe, it overflows instantly. I'm guessing that I need to increase the water depth of the skimmer body. Still wanted someones opinion on it though as this skimmer is new to me.

Thanks

 

[reefknight]

I have an Alpha 200. I have never felt that this skimmer has skimmed very well, and it has overflowed more times than I can count. When it overflows it spews water under the aquarium cabinet and onto outlets and my apex, it has shorted out some of the sockets and shut down my aquarium for a few days while I was gone and killed a few corals. Is there a solution to this problem? I have cleaned everything on the skimmer and there is not obstruction of the air flow, also nothing has changed in my aquarium as far as additions go. The skimmer sits in around 9.5" of water.
The overflow has been occuring over and over for around a year.
I am tired of dealing with this problem and I just want this skimmer to start skimming properly. Any suggestions?
It also seems strange to me that even with the outlet fully open the skimmer sometimes still overflows, and this occurs reguardless of feeding or additions.

Having a similar issue, mine though is in 8.25" water depth. Did raising yours to 8.5" stop the overflow issue? Trying to figure out why mine is being such a pain.

 

[notclear]

Do you have the adjustable nozzle? If not the pump comes with 2 different lengths of nozzle, I think one is only about 1/4" shorter than the other. Use the shorter one. That fixed my problem!

 

[reefknight]

I have the adjustable nozzle, its set at 2 turns out currently.

 

[n-kleine]

alpha 170

alpha 170

Hello everyone. I am thinking about buying an Alpha 170. What is the "sweet spot" water depth and how many turns out on the inlet? Thanks.

 

[n-kleine]

Alpha 170

Alpha 170

Count me in!!!! What a beautiful skimmer! Thanks Premium!