problems with Corallife Super Skimmer

[Pallen81]

Hi All,

I have a Coralife Super Skimmer 65 on my 30 gallon marine tank. for the first 4 months it worked perfectly, no problems at all. Wellllllll, I turned my skimmer off to do some WC's and maintenance. When I restarted the skimmer it shot water out the top! I adjusted the flow valve in order to slow down the suction and bubbles from overflowing the collection cup.

In the manual it says once the unit is "broken in", you do not have to adjust the flow valve (the underwater valve, not the red adjustable flow rate). I have it about half way closed to prevent it from overflowing all over the place.

Should I take out the unit, clean it, and start it up again from stratch or do you think the unit will reset its self soon.

sorry, this might be a bit confusing.... :)

[mamasky]

I don't have any answers for you but I have a CSS 125 on my 90 and it's horrible. We have so many problems. We have to turn it off when we feed and leave it off for at least an hour before turning it back on or it goes crazy. It decides to randomly stop working or it will just start pulling up too much stuff and the container will overflow.

I am pretty sure that there's a link posted on the forum to a site that shows different mods you can do to it.

[Pallen81]

We have to turn it off when we feed and leave it off for at least an hour before turning it back on or it goes crazy. It decides to randomly stop working or it will just start pulling up too much stuff and the container will overflow.
hmm I see.

I dont have any problems during feeding times or anything like that. I generally leave it on at all time except during water changes. Seems the less its turned off, the better.

I adjusted my water-in-take valve (partly closed) and it's working correctly now, but the manual says the valve should always be completely open. I just don't want to ruin it!

I think I will take it out and completely clean it up and see what happens.

[sploke]

In the first month I had mine, it pumped about 5 gal of water out of my sump on several occasions. I have no idea why, just at some point the bubble level would shoot super high and the collection cup would fill up and overflow. I've started cleaning the sponge in the bubble trap more often, and that seems to help somewhat. The only thing I could think of was that it was getting stopped up and the water couldn't drain out fast enough, so it overflowed. It hasn't done it in a while, but in any case I won't be buying another one at any point in the future. Good case of "you get what you pay for."

[Pallen81]

In the first month I had mine, it pumped about 5 gal of water out of my sump on several occasions. I have no idea why, just at some point the bubble level would shoot super high and the collection cup would fill up and overflow. I've started cleaning the sponge in the bubble trap more often, and that seems to help somewhat. The only thing I could think of was that it was getting stopped up and the water couldn't drain out fast enough, so it overflowed. It hasn't done it in a while, but in any case I won't be buying another one at any point in the future. Good case of "you get what you pay for."

I was always told they were good skimmers. It still works fine and is skimming well, it just randomly changed how hard it sucks up water. I will clean the sponge (which does nothing by the way. my overflow box is just that. it completely overflows and no water goes through the actual sponge. lol.) to see if it helps any.

thanks for the input.

[Riverserver]

To help keep it from overflowing, you could cut the shaft inside your collection cup shorter. That way anything that boils over goes right back into the skimmer and not all over your floor.

But problems with the Coralife Skimmer seem to be common. I switched to the AquaC Remora and I absolutely love it.

[Subliminal]

Pallen,


You just need to clean it. After a while, ANY skimmer needs to be broken down and cleaned.

Also, I learned with mine (when I actually used one) that the overflow box isn't really needed, if you keep your hands out of the tank and turn it off whilst you feed. Mine only made microbubbles when i would mess with the tank.

But, you can also clean that sponge every week or so and that'll make a difference, too.

And you should still try and make it over to njreefers.org.

[Almondsaz]

I found when I had a CSS 65 that is was sensitive to back pressure and I stopped using the sponge that came with it and allowed the return flow to go direct back into the sump. I did have to shorten the flexible hose that came with it that goes into the sponge. As I said, that was for an in-sump installation.

[Pallen81]

Good tips and points guys. thanks. I'm going to break it down and give it a nice clean up tonight.