Water conditioner cause protein skimmer to overflow

superfish

superfish

Member
i use tap water with tetra conditioner to fill my new tank. its been 4 days now and the skimmer is still overflowing like crazy.
anyone had this issue before?. how long does it take for the skimmer to get back to normal.???
 
IHaveCrabs

IHaveCrabs

Premium member
I run RODI so I'm not sure. Tbh, you'll save more money with an RODI in the long run than with the water conditioner and mass amounts of GFO you'll likely need for the algae blooms from all the other elements in tap water.

Hopefully someone else can chime in if they have used conditioner before.


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V

Volcano1

Member
A long while ago I did dose some stress coat for new fish, and yes my skimmer went crazy. I'm guessing the same for your water conditioner. I thought it altered the surface tension of the water.
I did take awhile for the skimmer to settle down.I guessing until it pulled out all of the additive.If your going to keep any thing much larger than a nano, I second the RO solution. Otherwise I'd use distilled water, or something close. Most salt mixes are formulated to add to pretty pure water, and they replace most of the trace elements taken out.I know some people have run their tanks with only well water, and some have had ok results. I'd think most any municipal supply would need to be cleaned up some before tank use. TIMHO.

Hope it helps,

Todd
 
superfish

superfish

Member
IHaveCrabs said:
I run RODI so I'm not sure. Tbh, you'll save more money with an RODI in the long run than with the water conditioner and mass amounts of GFO you'll likely need for the algae blooms from all the other elements in tap water.

Hopefully someone else can chime in if they have used conditioner before.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Volcano1 said:
A long while ago I did dose some stress coat for new fish, and yes my skimmer went crazy. I'm guessing the same for your water conditioner. I thought it altered the surface tension of the water.
I did take awhile for the skimmer to settle down.I guessing until it pulled out all of the additive.If your going to keep any thing much larger than a nano, I second the RO solution. Otherwise I'd use distilled water, or something close. Most salt mixes are formulated to add to pretty pure water, and they replace most of the trace elements taken out.I know some people have run their tanks with only well water, and some have had ok results. I'd think most any municipal supply would need to be cleaned up some before tank use. TIMHO.

Hope it helps,

Todd
Click to expand...

Thanks guys for the suggestion.
I do use RODI for all my tanks. The only reason I use tap water this time is because the tank is too big for me to move buckets of water to fill it up.
Now it's been 4 days. Things are not looking right... Kind of regret now.
 
anarchy

anarchy

Active member
Hmm that's weird. I use tap water without the conditioner with no issues so it has to be the conditioner. I'd say run the skimmer as dry as possible and keep emptying it out until it calms down. Probably a couple days. Or run alot of carbon to try pulling it out of the system. That's what I had to do when I added chemiclean, even with skimmer running wide open it over flowed. So I did 2 10 gallon water changes and when that didn't help I filled the reactor with carbon and it was good in a couple hours
 
trackfast

trackfast

Princess Trainer
If it's a new tank I wouldn't bother running the skimmer until it actually had livestock in it. My thought is that skimmers remove dissolved organic solids; there isn't much of that until you get some bioload. I'd leave the skimmer off until later.
 
Siebo

Siebo

Premium member
trackfast said:
If it's a new tank I wouldn't bother running the skimmer until it actually had livestock in it. My thought is that skimmers remove dissolved organic solids; there isn't much of that until you get some bioload. I'd leave the skimmer off until later.
Click to expand...
+1 turn it off and let the tank cycle
 
superfish

superfish

Member
anarchy said:
Hmm that's weird. I use tap water without the conditioner with no issues so it has to be the conditioner. I'd say run the skimmer as dry as possible and keep emptying it out until it calms down. Probably a couple days. Or run alot of carbon to try pulling it out of the system. That's what I had to do when I added chemiclean, even with skimmer running wide open it over flowed. So I did 2 10 gallon water changes and when that didn't help I filled the reactor with carbon and it was good in a couple hours
Click to expand...
Thanks. The thing is, I set the skimmer wide open. It still fill the collection cup up with in 20 seconds.
I did a 30gal water change today using water from my other system. Still a lot of bubble. Nothing changed...
I think I'm gonna get some carbon tmrw and try that out.
My sump is like a washing machine with bubble now...
View attachment 13811
 
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superfish

superfish

Member
Siebo said:
+1 turn it off and let the tank cycle
Click to expand...
trackfast said:
If it's a new tank I wouldn't bother running the skimmer until it actually had livestock in it. My thought is that skimmers remove dissolved organic solids; there isn't much of that until you get some bioload. I'd leave the skimmer off until later.
Click to expand...
Thanks guys. I was planning to add a few fish on day 7, since I'm using all live rock from established tank and new plastic media which is clean.
But now I don't feel comfortable putting fish in it, until I m sure the skimmer will do the job...
 
jayjerk

jayjerk

Premium member
I had that issue when u used melafix. I added a stupid amount of carbon to the reactor and did 50% wc for it to stop
 
superfish

superfish

Member
jeffy said:
If it's at you shop I might be able to come by an lend a hand if you can't get it going.
Click to expand...
Thanks buddy! Haven't meet you for awhile. How are the fish doing?
Yea, whenever you have time.! I can also show you some of my new pairs!
 
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