Short Video of the Microbubbles going into my skimmer... kinda worried.

[dannieboiz]

Here's a short Video of the microbubbles traveling into my skimmer. ... you can see bubbles pumping into the skimmer from the mag 9.5... I'm just doing all the adjustment right now with freshwater so there's still room to change.

The skimmer is an EV-180, the microbubble is coming down with the drain... My drain is a 1.5" drain with durso pipe Teed out to 2x 3/4" one going into the fuge and one going straight into the Mag 9.5.

In a perfect world, I should be able to close the gate valve on the opposite end to get more water onto the skimmer side and call it a day. But in this not so perfect world, when I do that it did eliminate the bubbles but I'll get an overflow since 3/4" drain won't be able to handle the flow of the mag 12.


My tank is sitting outside of the house and the concrete that it's on isn't level. The tank leans forward. My OF box can handle the flow but it seems like the teeth aren't letting enough water through. I'm hoping that once it level out more water will be able to travel into the back of the tank forces water through faster.

Sorry for the long post but 3 weeks of plumbing is about enough.

 

[Entropy]

The bubbles should not cause any issues IMO. The air injector forces air into the stream anyway, so if anything you should get more bubbles than normal.

The skimmer will not bubble or work with fresh water by the way, so you have to add salt (and something for the skimmer to skim) for it to work.

 

[dannieboiz]

I was thinking that too but not too sure.... I guess I can always close the injection a little more.

Was just testing... didn't expect to skim out anything.

 

[manderx]

little bubbles won't matter, but big bubbles will keep the pump from being able to generate pressure on the injector.

edit: video finally loaded. i'd say that's too much air, and that it's significantly reducing the pressure from the pump.

 

[dannieboiz]

Looks like I might have to re plumb the skimmer to pull water from the sump itself, I guess that's gonna beat the purpose of my drain design.

Does anyone else have any bright idea on how I should redo this?

 

[ruiny]

There is air going down the drain with the water
So you are sending air into the pump.
Also unless you have a prefilter you will be chopping everthing up in the pump first and if something larger (eg: fish or snail)
than you will have a big prob.
Pumping from the sump is probably the best/easy way to solve this.

 

[dannieboiz]

No worries about debris cause my water level is 12" above the external OF box with a durso. I gotta think about where to plumb the intake for the skimmer from the sump now. So much for that idea.

 

[Gudwyn]

I can't see the plumbing just to the left of your video.

Does the entire flow of water from the overflow go into the skimmer? Doesn't look that way. It looks like maybe you are sucking out the side of a TEE.

Instead, change it so that the sump drain is going out the side of the TEE and have a droop in the line that then comes up to your skimmer feed pump. This will encourage the air to go out the side and down to your sump rather than into the skimmer.

If you are sucking water out the side of a tee as the water and air rush past, it's going to be lots of air and not much water.