Protein Skimmer and Coral issues

[Antrias]

Hi Everyone,

I have had my tank going for 6 months now with relatively no problems. However now I have two problems are are driving me nuts! The first is my protein skimmer use to be dead silent (reef octopus diablo Dcs-170) now it is making air gurgling noise - air flapping. So I took the pump and gave it a good cleaning and got all the salt build up on the part that connects the air tube to the pump thinking that would solve them.problem for sure. But not didn't make a difference! I hate the noise what can I do to get it back to silent?

Second problem is my candy coral used to be really healthy. All my other coral looks fine except the candy corals heads are shrinking. Any tips?

[LoJack]

Hi Everyone,

I have had my tank going for 6 months now with relatively no problems. However now I have two problems are are driving me nuts! The first is my protein skimmer use to be dead silent (reef octopus diablo Dcs-170) now it is making air gurgling noise - air flapping. So I took the pump and gave it a good cleaning and got all the salt build up on the part that connects the air tube to the pump thinking that would solve them.problem for sure. But not didn't make a difference! I hate the noise what can I do to get it back to silent?

Second problem is my candy coral used to be really healthy. All my other coral looks fine except the candy corals heads are shrinking. Any tips?

Sounds like something is still blocking or impeding the muffler. I've also seen a thread where a person added a piece of hose to the end of the muffler, and fed it back into the exhaust hole on the collection cup. This silenced it quite a lot apparently.

[CM125]

Hi Everyone,

I have had my tank going for 6 months now with relatively no problems. However now I have two problems are are driving me nuts! The first is my protein skimmer use to be dead silent (reef octopus diablo Dcs-170) now it is making air gurgling noise - air flapping. So I took the pump and gave it a good cleaning and got all the salt build up on the part that connects the air tube to the pump thinking that would solve them.problem for sure. But not didn't make a difference! I hate the noise what can I do to get it back to silent?

Second problem is my candy coral used to be really healthy. All my other coral looks fine except the candy corals heads are shrinking. Any tips?

Your tank is still fairly young and going through changes, its possible something has built up over time or depleted over time. Have you done all your tests?

[Antrias]

Sounds like something is still blocking or impeding the muffler.

Yeah it really does and there was a ton of build up inside that piece that connects the pipe to the pump i was almost certain that getting that off would fix it. Maybe I'll take it apart again and have a third look over to see if I missed something.

I've also seen a thread where a person added a piece of hose to the end of the muffler, and fed it back into the exhaust hole on the collection cup. This silenced it quite a lot apparently.

Hopefully I don't have to do any modifications - It was so perfectly quiet for so long! Even looking at the pump taking air in I can see that the air is being taken in normally but every 10-15 seconds there is an extra amount of air bubbles that get in causing this flapping noise.

Your tank is still fairly young and going through changes, its possible something has built up over time or depleted over time. Have you done all your tests?

Using the API Reef master kit I have:
0 Phosphate
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
0 Nitrate
310~ppm Calcium (Maybe a bit low... I have slowly been adding some supplemental calcium since i last took the test so I'll retake tonight)
35ppm salinity

I use RO/DI water as well

[denny_C]

I would strongly recommend a better quality test kit especially if dosing API is horribly inaccurate for Cal

[Antrias]

I will pick up another kit and retest calcium... I retested everything today and it looked good.

However my RODI unit is doing a terrible job. My tap water comes out at 200~ the RODI is only putting it to 170~... my Britta filter gets it to 150~! I think my house water pressure is just to ****ty.

[LoJack]

You can buy a booster pump for under a hundred bucks that will boost that pressure for your RODI and get it working properly again.

[hillegom]

Are you on a well, or city water?
What is the pressure? It should be at least 60psi
If you have that, then your membrane has a hole in it. And your DI filter is depleted. Barring everything else, your DI will bring the TDS down to 0.
Check the TDS of the water coming out of the ro membrane. It should be about 95% less than your tap water.

[Antrias]

Are you on a well, or city water?
What is the pressure? It should be at least 60psi
If you have that, then your membrane has a hole in it. And your DI filter is depleted. Barring everything else, your DI will bring the TDS down to 0.
Check the TDS of the water coming out of the ro membrane. It should be about 95% less than your tap water.

I am on city water - it could be I don't know what i am doing with the unit but i also am sure that the DI resin is depleted now that you mention it. The unit has like a valve at the waste water line that if I keep it mostly closed i get close to 60PSI however if I fully open it i get maybe 20PSI.

[KrazyKuch]

Are you sure your rodi unit is connected properly.....sounds like their is no flow restricter installed or the flush valve is open

[hillegom]

+1
That valve is for flushing the membrane.

[hillegom]

sent u a pm with a diagram and video

[Antrias]

sent u a pm with a diagram and video

I actually found the video very helpful however I have different valve on mine that I might consider throwing out.
http://imgur.com/CooXy6z

Here is my sad candy coral
http://imgur.com/2ZAVF9E

[Antrias]

sent u a pm with a diagram and video

I actually found the video very helpful however I have different valve on mine that I might consider throwing out.
http://imgur.com/CooXy6z
http://imgur.com/CooXy6z

Here is my sad candy coral
http://imgur.com/2ZAVF9E
http://imgur.com/2ZAVF9E

[hillegom]

That is a precision type of valve. Forget the name. The last person to install that probably used it as a flow restrictor. If so and if everything else is hooked up properly, then you adjust that valve so that when you get 1 liter of ro water, 4 liters of waste are produced.
Do you have a pic of the other side of the ro membrane housing?

[Antrias]

I'll grab some more pictures tonight but I also think my DI cartridges might be screwed

[Antrias]

I got the RO unit figured out I believe. A few of the DI canisters are broken and the value is not adjusted properly and it's to tedious to adjust the "EZ-Flush-kit" value back to the appropriate spot after using it to flush. So I am ordering a regular flushkit.

This candy coral is killing me though. Everything else in my tank is perfectly fine except for it.