skimming

i have a 55 gallon tank and a bak pak 2 skimmer if i dont angle the intake to the surface where is sucks some air and right from the surface i get alot of film. any suggestions i am also a new memeber of the club thanks for all the useful info you guys post looking forward to meeting some of you.
 
Welcome! Are you useing a sump? I built a HOB overflow to drain my 55 into a sump. I had to build an acrylic skimmer box to get the film off of my water surface, since my U-tube obviously does nothing for skimming. You could try building a skimmer box around your intake to remove the film. Also water movement on the surface (i.e. powerhead) will take care of the film, but you are really not removing the proteins that way unless your intake is catching all of the gook.

Personal opinion would be to build a cheap skimmer box. You can even make one out of a plastic container and a dremel tool. You have tons of options and enough opinions on here to point you in the right direction. Good luck and I hope that helps.

Anthony
 
i am not using a sump and i dont have to empty my skimmer but maybe once a week it doesnt have much stuff in it is there a chance my skimmer is to small? i will move the powerheads i have found a few diy things to go around the pump to pull water from the surface i was just trying to get some imput thanks
 
I have never used a bak pak skimmer, so I could not tell you how well they work. I use a Sea Clone with a maxi jet 1200 and an air stone running down center of the unit and I collect a cup of gook a day on average. How heavily stocked is your tank? Less fish/coral/cuc = less junk in the water column.
 
i have 3 chromis and a clown fish maybe 15 corals mostly frags having more surface current has helped the film i was just thinking maybe the skimmer was to small
 
Sounds to me like you should not be pulling that much with your skimmer based on your stocking level. I could be wrong, but I do not pull anything out of my harlequin tank now, but I used to pull about a 1/2 cup a week when I had my clowns in that tank. You should be fine. I would check out the surface skimmer box mods for your bak pak though.
 
The biggest help with surface film is surface skimming... that is to say, getting the junk off of the surface of the water by having the water flow into a box of some sort that leads to the skimmer so it can then remove the proteins from the water. :)

Brandon
 
If you have live rock, I think you should be able to pull skim. You may need to adjust for some type of surface skimming mod to still skim the surface but not pull in a bunch of air
 
does anyone know of a surface skimmer attachment for the bak pak skimmer or some sort of diy plans. I have seen a few diy plans i was just looking for some imput because i came home today with a surface full of film. I was thinking of buying one of the octopus skimmers that has the surface skimming thing bulit in has anyone know anything about them?
 
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