Fresh Water vs Salt Water Protein Skimmers

[wingshear]

Hi All,
This is my first post to this forum, so please forgive any posting mistakes until I get up to speed here.

I'm setting up a new 90 gal. Salt/Reef tank basically from scratch. I had a 125 gal. fish tank for about 15 years but I wanted to move it to a better place in the house, and the new area would not fit the 6 foot tank, so I had a custom 90 gal tank and stand built to fit the new area. I was going to use my old sump and protein skimmer on the new tank. So I set up the sump and skimmer in the driveway, plumbed it and fired it up to make sure it all worked before I removed my temp sump and installed it. I used fresh water to fill the sump and test the skimmer. My problems is that I'm not getting proper skimmer action. The bubbles that used come out of the skimmer were micro in size, as they should be, but using my test set-up with fresh water, I'm getting really big bubbles into the reaction chamber. Before I tore down the old tank this set-up was working perfectly. Is the problem I'm seeing because I'm using fresh water to test and not salt? Is there really that much difference between fresh and salt water in the way in reacts in a skimmer?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me here.

Wingshear

 

[Hondatek]

Your protein skimmer is fine. They do not work in freshwater that's why you weren't getting the microbubbles .

 

[wingshear]

Oh man, that's really good news. I took it apart - checked it over and over again, and nothing. I'm glad to hear that it's just the water!

Thanks Again,
Wingshear

 

[oyf709]

make sure you let it run in your tank for few days before you concern about the skimmer as most skimmer require time to start produce skimates