Need help in Aqua C Remora skimmer

[Boxster]

Hi all,
I have a 4 weeks old FOWLR 46g tank. My Aqua C with MaxiJet 1200 is not producing a full cup of dark water everyday. What I got is about 1/2 cup of light green water every 3 days. Is it something wrong?
What should the distance between the pump and the water surface? Also, should the pump located below the returning water from the skimmer or should it be the other way?

 

[fishfreek]

Mine does not produce a full cup every day either. This is totally fine. Your skimmer will only produce as much skim as you have DOC's in the water. If you want more skim per day then you really need to add more food and other chemicals to your water per day so your skimmer has more to remove. HEHE.

If your pump's intake is free of obstruction then your skimmer should be operating near peek efficenty. Your skimmer is still rather new so I dont think you have to clean the injection tip. I would turn your pump around so the intake is oppiste of the skimmer outlet.

My remora came with a small 1" hose attached to the skimmer and the insstructions said to attach the pump directly to that and not to add any additonal hose. Thus the distance from the pump to the water is faily well set.

Adding a surface skimmer box might increase the efficenty somewhat but I dont know why your expecting a full cup every day.

 

[cj10488]

It should be fine.. At first according the the remora paperwork it will be excessive however they state that within a week or 2 it will settle down.. FWIW I have the same remora and it skims and fills the collection cup about weekly.. As for setting it I just put the cup in as far as it can go and bring it up a tad bit from there... I have my aqua C in my sump now so my pump is about 8" away from the skimmer and from what aqua C states it that it should work alot better by being in the sump..

HTH,
James

 

[wseaton]

The problem here is one we've been discussing in other threads about skimmers. The Remora's biggest fault is the powerhead is too close to the return overflow, so you get a lot of water that simply keeps rotating through the remora.

Try to get a powerhead configured so that is it blows across where the remora is mounted, and hence breaks up this race track effect. If you're really savy you'll figure out a way to get water into the remora with the powerhead located at the opposite side of the tank. When i did that to my remora, I'd say the skim amount, oh, tripled....

Also make sure the collection cup is lowered all the way.

 

[Porksound]

I think the best solution to the "racetrack" effect is using the surface skimmer... if you put the surface box in the water current (say in a sump, or near a powerhead) it will take in water from the current and release back into the stream...

shrug

p

 

[Boxster]

I was reading somewhere that you should expect 1 dark color cup a day. Mine is not dark color but light tea color so being new to this hobby, I am worried. Well this is my tank profile:
45lbs LR
2 Blue Legged Hermit
2 Turbo Snail
1 small cleaner shrimp
2 small "Nemo"
1 Emperor 400

My remora does comes with a 1" hose that I attached my pump to. How do you configure the pump such that it is across the skimmer??? Doesn't the motor of the pump will be against the tank glass and causing excessive noise and vibration to the glass?

Again, what does the surface box do? For now, probably I will turn my pump to the opposite side such that it is away from the skimmer outlet. However, in this configuration, the pump will be closer to my Emperor 400 and I am afraid that it will hurt the water circulation on the skimmer side. My configuration is that one side of my tank is the Emperor 400 and the other side is Remora.
Should I add another pump?

 

[fishfreek]

What I was describing was that the pump has an inlet and an outlet. The outlet is going up the skimmer line and the inlet is if your facing the skimmer either pointing to the left or the right or pointing directly at you or directly away from you.

I have my maxijet1200 so the ph inlet is pointing to the left and the skimmer outlet is on the right.

With your tank only having 2 fish The amount of that you will get from your skimmer will be low. Now if you added way to many fish to your setup and you feed way to often then yes you would get more output from the skimmer. Think of it as good tha tyour not getting 1 cup per day since that would mean your water is much dirtier than it is.

 

[Boxster]

Thanks fishfreek. My pump inlet is on the same side as the skimmer outlet now which is right if you look from the front of the tank. I will adjust it to the opposite side. Would that hurt my water circulation now that the Emperor 400 and the Maxijet is on the same side of the tank. They are at different height though.

The things that I don't understand is wseaton comments about
"powerhead configured so that is it blows across where the remora is
mounted, and hence breaks up this race track effect.."

How do you configure it to blows across the skimmers??? Just can't visualize it.

 

[fishfreek]

I belive what would be needed for wseaton's comments is another powerhead positioned so it is blowing across the back of the tank.

There should be little effect on your water circulation by roatating the PH around.

 

[biotoxin]

good idea seaton. Maybe my next diy skimmer will have to incorporate what youre talking about. Ill have to see what i can do. I dumped you some kudos also since most of your posts have little nuggets of advice that help me and im sure others

 

[wseaton]

I've fiddled and played with all types of skimmers until the sun came up, just because I'm facinated by these things and how they have dramatically helped the life of my tanks. I've also played with many configs of my Remora and took really close notes of what worked in didn't.

There's a misconception that putting a filter of any type on a tank will insure 100% of the water in the tank will go through the filter just because you have a big pump on it. Such is not true. *Any* filter that has the input in relative close proximity to the output is going to lose efficiency because a lot of the water just keeps going back through the filter.

With a big back filter like a Emperor 400 it's not quite a problem. The Emperor dumps a huge volume of water back into the tank and basically uses a brute force approach to water movement. The Remora however moves a trickle of water compared to the 400, and hence can't move the mass of water on it's own. So, a large percentage of freshly skimmed water just gets skimmed over and over.

Ideally any skimmer does best in a place where the water entering comes from the opposite side of the tank from where the water exits the skimmer. This insures that the skimmer is getting a constant supply of fresh water.

However, with a hang on style skimmer this isn't always practical unless you feel like sticking a plastic pipe on your powerhead and extending it to the opposite side of the tank, which is kind of ugly. My compromise was to put the Remora's powerhead literally inside my Aquaclear 500 filter box sitting on the opposite side of my tank, and run the plumbing from there. It worked, but was a real pain to do.

If your tank were *my* tank and wanted to keep things simple, I'd put the Emperor 400 smack dab in the middle of the tank and park the Remora immediatley on the right side of it. This way the Remora is sitting close to the draft of the 400 much like sitting behind a semi on the highway to 'ride his draft and steal the current. Sticking a Remora at the end of a tank is the *worst* place you want it unless you can figure out a way to feed it water directly from the other side.

I also agree that surface skimming is important, but an Emperor 400 renders it moot is an average size tank. The Emperor is literally dumping over a ton of water per hour onto the the surface of the water, and hence the water column in all but the largest tanks is going to be pretty even.

 

[biotoxin]

so what about a setup like this? With the left side of the box being open so that only new water flows to the pump?

 

[Boxster]

I am thinking of buying another power head. So just place it at the right back corner close to the top of the water level?

I am trying also to create water circulation such that the waste will not stay at some dead spot.

Can the power head be put in the mid water level position of does it always have to be at the top?

 

[biotoxin]

no it can be lower water level