Skimmer Problem

[sakeating]

So, my fiance wakes me up this morning and tells me that the fish tank sounds funny. I get up to see my main pump partially sucking air. Needless to say my water level in the sump dropped way below safe. After more investigation, I discovered an inch or so of water outside of the sump in the bottom of the stand. My skimmer is plumbed with a drain for the cup and I have a hose running into a much larger tupperware container. My skimmer cup apparently filled overnight and overflowed the tupperware containter as well. By my estimation it dumped about 2 gallons of water into the bottom of my stand and the floor. This is all in a newly setup 40g breeder with a 20g sump. The skimmer is an aqua c urchin. The link to it on marine depot is here: http://www.marinedepot.com/AquaC_Urchin_In_Sump_Protein_Skimmer_w_Drain_Fitti ng_+_Maxi_Jet_1200_Pump_In_Sump_Spray_Injection_Pr otein_Skimmers_For_Tanks_Up_to_150_Gallons-AquaC-AC3513-FIPSISSIUH-ACUDB-vi.html It did this once before the 2nd day of setup and has been behaving since. Some of the skimmate was really dark green, but the majority of it just appeared to be water. Is this normal?

Thanks

[Troylee]

it could be numerous things.... did you dose anything or use any epoxy??? there is so much stuff we use in our tanks that will make a skimmer overflow including foods.... it's hard to say the direct cause....

[sakeating]

I don't dose anything and I didn't use any epoxy. I did drop a small amount of spectrum marine fish formula last night. When I do this, how long should I leave the main pump off, it at all?

[tomgl]

The aqua-c do this from time to time. I have seen it more in the injection type skimmers. The bubble wall will get think and it carries extra water up and fills the cup and or overflow tank. When mine does this I close off the valve going to the skimmer for a few hours and wait out what ever has created the water tension. I would get the main pump up as soon as possible.

[five O]

You could also take off the additional collection cups. Since they are located outside of the sump and this is your area of failure right now. If you stick with only the factory cup for now, if your skimmer did over flow it would only over flow right back into the sump and not your floor. Once you get the skimmer all dialed in you could go back to you additional collection cups. The only real draw back for now is that you will have empty the collection cup a little more often. This will keep your girlfriend happy and the water off the floor

[tbone74]

+1^^^ I had an ev180 that did that once and a while so I took the elbow fitting on the cup and turned it upword and placed a piece of hose on it and cut it off at the same level as the neck inside the cup. The cup still holds a decent amount of sludge, and pours out of the tube into the sump when it gets full.

[sakeating]

yeah, I already pulled the tube lol. I figured I'd rather have it overflow into the tank then into the floor, and it would be stuff that was already in the water anyways. Tom, this is exactly what my skimmer did. It was foaming a lot and pulling in water. I removed the collection cup, rinsed, and returned and it was back to normal. Fortunately most of the water was pooled up in the stand tho.