Stupid piece of crap crp!!!!

[manny]

My cpr backpacks been fine till I turned it off for a day when I added some chemi-clean. After 24 hours I turned it on and the freakin thing is blowin out bubbles like crazy. Well, I left it off for another day cause I didn't have time to clean out the powerfilter so I had to wait a day. Well, waited a day, cleaned it out, adn tried it again. More freakin bubbles!!! Left it on last night and today there's no collection in the cup. So I pushed it down a little more under the water line so I could get some cellection. Here's my question.
Why are all the freakin bubbles comin out??? Are they gonna go away any time soon?

[Henry]

Exactly what Josh said. Generally whenever something is added to the water, it will cause a skimmer to go nuts. It will take a little while for it all to clear up for you.

[GaryP]

Surfactants (soapy chemicals) were probably released from the dead cyano. They are what gives it that slimy feel. I would suggest going ahead and skimming vigorously even if the product is a little watery.

Gary

[Instar]

Agree with GaryP. Mess with it and adjust the bubble size till the bubbles are larger and water flow is less till you get a drier foam.
[b]GaryP[/p], Asside from using something like vegi oil, what can he use as an anti-surfactant? I've stuck my finger in and the protein/oils from my hand burst the bubbles so it doesn't foam so much, but, that doesn't last long. Vitamins with amino acids will foam you like that too and flake foods like Formula 1 when finely ground to a powder will make the bubbles burst earlier and stop the wild foam. But, you don't want to go away thinking all is well and return to find a mess. I turn my water flow back and air adjust for larger bubbles when I add something that will make a lot of foam, but, I am not sure he can do that with this skimmer.

[GaryP]

Larry

I used to work for a company that manufactured defoamers. Generally they were of two types. Either silicone oils (similar to what is used for transformer coolant and the old breast implants) or polyols (ethylene oxide/propylene oxide co-polymers). I would stay away from any oil as we know what they do to corals. The polyols could be used at very low concentrations (ppm's), are non-toxic, and they are biodegradable but I'm not sure where you could get them locally in anything less than a five gal. bucket. However, defoaming would defeat the purpose of the skimmer. Its difficult to defoam just a little bit. Its pretty much all or nothing.

I would suggest, keeping an eye on his salinity and adjusting his make up water accordingly and just ride the foaming problem out. It shouldn't last for long. As soon as he purges his system of the cyano surfactants his system should be back to normal. The fate of the cyano surfactants should be elimination by skimming and bio. These sufactants are mainly sugars and lipids that should be highly bio degradable. I had the same sort of problem back in the bad ole days when I was fighting hair algae problems.

I wonder if the oxidizer in the Chemi-Clean is contributing to this. I have heard of folks hooking an ozone generator to their skimmer to produce more foam and digest the scum product. Surely the oxidizer is fairly quickly degraded. I'd love to know the active ingredient in Chemi-Clean. If any one knows, please let me know. I have checked their website but there is nothing there. Which is kinda funny since it is working as a pesticide. Under federal environmental laws, the Federal Insectide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act to be exact, all pesticides bust contain their active ingredients on the label. I wonder how they get around that.

The active ingredient would have to be time released to keep from shocking the system like chlorine does. I think it can't act simply from directly oxidizing the cyano. Oxidizers are not golden bullets. They attack anything that is oxidizable. It would be to non-specific for that and probably take out to many other benefical critters as well. I somehow think it just raises the redox potential of the water similar to how an ozonator works. Cyano likes low redox potential. That's why it usually grows in stagnant areas and why proper flow is helpful in its control.

Just as a side note. Most planetary biologists think that cyano is the source of most of the original oxygen on the earth. They developed when there was little oxygen in the atmosphere billions of years ago and converted the mostly CO2 atmosphere to oxygen. OK, enough biology and chemistry 101 for today. I probably lost a lot of you a long time ago.

[manny]

I wrote to Boyd Enterprises asking about there active ingredients and here's what they wrote back:

Thank you very much for deciding to use our products. We know here at Boyd that you have choices when choosing your aquarium products, and we appreciate you choosing us.
We here at boyd get your question quite often, however due to the sensitive information of exactly what the active ingredient(s) are in our Chemi-clean product that we can't dilvuldge in full detail what those ingredient(s) are.
However, the product does function in similar ways to some anti-biotics. Due to the special mix of ingedients the product does a very excellent job without harming any of your corals or fish. I"m sorry we can't give you the information you would like. however we assure you that the product is safe to use. We guarrantee the product as long as it's used according the it's proper directions. Use of the product in any other manner.

best regards,
matthew boyd

Doesn't that suck... By the way, bubbles are all cleared up now :D

[GaryP]

Manny,

Email them again and ask for a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). By federal law they have to provide one upon request. Say that you do tank service or something as the law only covers use in the work place. Any hazardous chemicals have to be listed in the MSDS.

They are still violating FIFRA by selling an unlicensed pesticide. I used to work in the pesticide industry on industrial water treating compounds, including algaecides.

I'm sure they are just trying to protect their proprietary product info. Its probably something that is dirt cheap in the industrial chemical marketplace, like a lot of the things that get marketed to us. Any decent analytical lab could probably figure it out in a couple of days at most.

Gary

[matt]

C'mon, Gary, you don't really think that someone in the aquarium products industry would try to sell us something at an inflated price, do you? haha....

[GaryP]

Matt,

Personally I think the aquarium industry is right behind the sex industry when it comes to inflating prices. One of these days I'll write up and post the recipe for making a $40 bucket of buffer for $2 worth of stuff from the grocery store.

Gary

[Instar]

Boyd Enterprises is being silly like a lot of people who think they can protect their products. It doesn't cost that much to analyze it. If someone has the cash to analyze it and steal the idea, this lame response they give customers is a waste of time for them. Thanks for finding that out as I don't use products from companies who won't list the contents when asked. I figure they don't want me to know for some other reason, like its harmful to my health or makes potential breeder fish sterile. No sense in taking that chance.

[manny]

I'll email em again and see what happens. It's probly like powdered sugar er somethin

[GaryP]

Hmmmm, a placebo cure for cyano? The litle buggers are easy to fool aren't they?

Gary

[matt]

Hey, let's not forget the banking industry. How about those closing costs...

[GaryP]

They said it was "similar" to an antibiotic. Cyano is a bacteria so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a common antibiotic that you could buy at any feed store. That wouldn't jive with it being an oxidizer though. If it were an antibiotic it would indiscrimately kill the good bacteria in the LR and LS as well as cyano. That's what has got me confused. You rarely find a "golden bullet" when it comes to biocides.

Gary

[Andrew]

I've had that bubble problem before (after having the skimmer off). The profusion of bubbles should stop within a day or so after the skimmer has been running again. If not, adjust the pump airline valve to reduce bubble frequency.

Hope this helps

andrew

[Instar]

I guess that means be careful if Joshua puts out a cheese ball and crackers when you go to his house for a frag or something. Thanks for the heads up dude!

[GaryP]

When I was in college I worked for a mycologist (a guy that studies fungi). He had been fairly famous back in the 50's because he had developed a couple of very important antibiotics including Streptomycin. One day I found a really pretty orange mold in my coffee filter. Go figure! I took it to the Prof to get him to identify it for me. He threw me out of his lab and told me to never bring it back it back. Apparently someone had done the same thing and the spores had spread throughout the lab and contaminated everything.

OK, so it was just a little off topic.

[GaryP]

Joshua,

Are you seriously trying to tell me that you don't get yelled at for all the little plastic bowls full of left over, thawed fish food in your refrigerator?

I've been banished to the spare refrigerator in the garage.

Gary

[GaryP]

I always end up thawing out a little to much Formula 1, Angel Formula, mysids or something. Plus I use frozen daphia and baby brine for my corals. Left overs get stuck in the fridge until the next day.