Skimmate....or should I say lack of

[Reef Monkey]

I have a Remora with a Mag 3 on the back of a 29 gallon. The only inhabitants are 2 clownfish.

I get about a quarter inch of watery skimmate at the lowest level that the collection cup will go over the course of a week or two. Shouldn't I be getting more skimmate or because my bio load is small this is what I should expect? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff

 

[Scooterman]

I think you should get more than that out if it, I'm not sure how to adjust these but I know who does
Shoot Krish75 a PM, I think he can help you tweak it some to get more out of it!

 

[Krish]

Is the skimmer brand new? If so, it may take a while to break in. If not, it either sounds like something is screwing up or that your tank is just that clean and there is nothing to "skim" out. However, you should be able to pump out quite a bit of water atleast with the collection cup set as low as you have it so it leaves me to believe that maybe the pump is not doing it's job and not working properly or quite possibly you have a clogged injector that may need cleaning. Let us know how old the skimmer is

 

[itsme]

somtimes the air line tubing needs to be changed i know thats
what i had to do to my cpr

 

[jedimike]

There is also a set screw inside the unit that has to be removed and then you clean the injector with the included "pipe" brush. Also, make sure you have a filter on the Mag input so big chunks don't clog the injector.

 

[mmkeeper]

Make sure you clean the tube in the center of the skimmate cup atleast once a week

 

[roscoe]

Yeah i have a remora and a cpr bak pak w/ modded maxi jet 1200. The remora is hardly pulling anything out but the bak pak I have to empty every 2 days or so of some dark smelly skimmate. So now the remora don't really do anything it was skimming decent b4 i added the modded bak pak. Why is that?

 

[Reef Monkey]

The skimmer isn't even a year old yet. I don't have a filter over the end of the Mag 3. I will clean the injector and put a filter over the pump. I do keep my tank pretty clean, change 10-15% every couple of weeks, is this too much for only two clowns?

 

[itsme]

shouldnt be i do about a 10% every week with only 3 fish my skimmer did the same for along time so i stoped using it for about 3 weeks and now it is doing great after i changed the tubes

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

The Remora doesn't have airline tubes.

Reef Monkey - as jedimike mentioned, take out the collection cup and remove that plastic setscrew on the intake/injector pipe. Run the bottle brush thingy up and down in the hole several times. Screw the setscrew back in - THIS IS IMPORTANT unless you'd like to shoot saltwater several feet into the air. This should work wonders for you. I just did mine after a year and was amazed at how much more stuff I was pulling out, even though the bottle brush came out looking clean. As krish75 said, with the cup in the lowest position you should at least be pumping out a lot of clear water, if nothing else!