lziarek
Aquarium Advice Freak
love or hate it, but if you have it might as well make it work to the best of its ability =)
For all of us who are new and have purchased on of these bad boys, the hardest part about it is setting it up correctly in terms of froth generation, keeping water out of the collection cup, and bubbles out of the aquarium. I have managed to do precisely this and it should be easy to calibrate your own. This is how I did it:
step one: close venturi completely, no bubbles should be entering the reaction chamber, let any bubbles currently in the reaction chamber out (may take a minute)
step two: remove collection cup and black lid on collection cup (leave the lid off the cup for now)
step three: twist open the venturi about two to three full turns, you will generate a lot of bubbles but few will escape into the aquarium. Since the cup is removed most will pop without overflowing, in general you will get a nice froth.
step four: place the collection cup back on the skimmer (warning: the bubbles will shoot up the small plastic colum and start filling the cup with water, this is what we want initially, do not place the black lid on, this will increase the rate of flow into the cup).
step five: start turning down the venturi valve to limit the amount of air being taken in, you should notice that the rate which the bubbles/water fills the collection cup slowly receed (if the collection cup starts to get to a cirtical point with the over flow dump its contents into a bucket but do not modify air intake until the cup is back on the skimmer, as soon as you remove the cup the skimmer will stop over flowing).
step six: continue with step five until you reach a point where the bubbles pop before overflowing into cup
step seven: place black lid on top of the collection cup, bubbles will start to overflow into the cup again. Slowly turn down the air intake, you are almost there. As soon as you have a column of froth that does not overflow into the collection cup you are golden. The bubbles are popping readily since there is no "bio waste" to give the water a higher surface tension. As soon as there is waste the bubbles will not pop as easily and flow into the collection cup, which is what we want!
hope this helps everyone out =)
For all of us who are new and have purchased on of these bad boys, the hardest part about it is setting it up correctly in terms of froth generation, keeping water out of the collection cup, and bubbles out of the aquarium. I have managed to do precisely this and it should be easy to calibrate your own. This is how I did it:
step one: close venturi completely, no bubbles should be entering the reaction chamber, let any bubbles currently in the reaction chamber out (may take a minute)
step two: remove collection cup and black lid on collection cup (leave the lid off the cup for now)
step three: twist open the venturi about two to three full turns, you will generate a lot of bubbles but few will escape into the aquarium. Since the cup is removed most will pop without overflowing, in general you will get a nice froth.
step four: place the collection cup back on the skimmer (warning: the bubbles will shoot up the small plastic colum and start filling the cup with water, this is what we want initially, do not place the black lid on, this will increase the rate of flow into the cup).
step five: start turning down the venturi valve to limit the amount of air being taken in, you should notice that the rate which the bubbles/water fills the collection cup slowly receed (if the collection cup starts to get to a cirtical point with the over flow dump its contents into a bucket but do not modify air intake until the cup is back on the skimmer, as soon as you remove the cup the skimmer will stop over flowing).
step six: continue with step five until you reach a point where the bubbles pop before overflowing into cup
step seven: place black lid on top of the collection cup, bubbles will start to overflow into the cup again. Slowly turn down the air intake, you are almost there. As soon as you have a column of froth that does not overflow into the collection cup you are golden. The bubbles are popping readily since there is no "bio waste" to give the water a higher surface tension. As soon as there is waste the bubbles will not pop as easily and flow into the collection cup, which is what we want!
hope this helps everyone out =)
