Crud in Water

[Gauge]

I have a Bakpak2 HOB filter and a sump on my 42 hex tank. I turned off the bakpak because it somehow allowed microbubbles into the tank it bugged me. I have a protein skimmer, but it's not in my tank cuz I bought it off ebay and it's too big for my sump.

Now my water has a ton of junk floating in it. It looks like I just dumped 20 pounds of sand in the tank a couple hours ago. Suggestions?

[fishfreek]

Is this crud floating on the surface like its a film on the water or is it acutally suspended within the water column? Either way it sounds like you need to get your filter and you skimmer up and running.

I was under the impression that the BakPak2 was a skimmer. Maybe it needed to properly break in or maybe it was configured wrong and that was causing the bubbles into the tank. new skimmers often do this till they breakin (usually a few days time)

[AngelFishFan]

Do all protein skimmers do this? Because I do not want to purchase one if all it does is produce an excess amount of bubbles in the water! its totally unappealing.

[fishfreek]

All skimmers will hlave a break in period. This is a result of how the skimmer operates. While this break in period is going on it may dump some bubbles out into the tank. The reason is that the plastic/acrylic that the skimmer is made of is usually has some risidual chemicals from the manufacuring process and this causes the water to have a slightly higher surface tension than normal. After a few days the bubbles will no longer be introduced into the display.

Other causes of microbubbles into the tank from a skimmer is a result of it being inproperly configured/setup.

[Gauge]

It's in the water column, not on the surface. Bakpaks are a filter/skimmer combo. It's more of a skimmer, though, because the biomedia is all submerged, so it doesn't do much.

The Bakpak had been on there a while, but there was a crack between compartments that got worse, so I turned it off when microbubbles got through that crack. Now the junk is in the water... I'd say it's small enough to be classified as clay. Very, very small particles. I assume that's why they aren't being taken care of by my prefilters.

Should I just find another protein skimmer? Would that likely take care of it? It's not that bad, but if the lights are on, the particles are visible if you look closely, and it bugs me. My water used to be crystal clear.