Tiny bubbles...
by
, 02-02-2011 at 06:19 PM (10220 Views)
We have had cloudy water in the display tank, and thought we were dealing with fines in the water. We added an extension to route the water flow from the return over the long axis of the tank, and noted there were micro bubbles coming out of the return. We checked the skimmer, and the water coming from it had no noticeable bubbles. We did have lots of bubbles coming from the drain pipes into the sump.
Since our sump is a 100 gallon tub, we had to fabricate some sort of bubble trap from what we had available. We have several 5 gallon buckets, all of which have metal handles which are molded into the bucket. We also had some kitty litter buckets (cleaned out of course) which have a plastic handle, not metal. Brian used a 1/2" drill to ventilate the bottom inch of the bucket, and then we added some dry rocks. It isn't an elegant solutions or very pretty, but it's functional for now. The bubbles from the drain are no longer getting sucked into the return pump to end up in the tank, and the tank is clearing nicely. There are still some fines, but we're working on that. A filter sock is next.