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View Full Version : Bubble Magnus skimmer and my LHA..



350gt
Tue, 5th Jun 2012, 12:26 PM
I was trying hard to go skimmerless on my frag tank and also trying to go without fish. The little guys got the best of me and I ended with a couple of residents and a temp, so ofcourse this is where my problems started...

It started with a little algae on the plugs then to a hair algae just on the plugs, and it started spreading onto everything.... Chemipure kicked it back some but as soon as it was expended it came right back..
It was ugly..

So I called Louis to order me a bubble Magnus nac 3.5....

I plugged it in and it ran for a few days over overskimming to the point where I thought I might have a defective unit, a twist of the knob did nothing but produce more bubbles...

I couldn't figure it out and really thought about breaking down the tank....

So I decided to make a batch of saltwater and wet skim the the tank to see what I pull out, afterall it was over skimming either way....

Sure enough it was my dirty water, I skimmed close to 5 gallons and had to siphon water from the tank to the sump to keep the level up enough for the skimmer to operate...


Now i can say the algae is about all gone a week later and all the frags are opening back up... The LHA was robbing the life out of them, i only lost 1 or 2 frags though the whole ordeal.

Today I plan to remove the temp(baby hippo), remove racks, and rebuild a new rack.... To chance any kind of comeback, which I doubt will happen with the skimmer kicking butt...




I am sure a equivalent skimmer would have had the same results but this skimmer I would recommend and is super quiet.. It also super small with a foot print like 4x7 which is about all the room I had left in my sump...

Wish I had some pics to share, but who wants to share or take pics of a ugly tank, I was embarrassed to even show this tank to anyone....

350gt
Tue, 5th Jun 2012, 12:29 PM
A simple test of the water could have saved me some time..... But me being me(lazy) I didn't want to test it and was actually hoping it would just go away lol.

Cammed_02
Tue, 5th Jun 2012, 12:38 PM
Good to hear you solved the problem, I have heard nothing but good things about the BM skimmers. Is the hippo going into the display afterall?

klwheat
Wed, 6th Jun 2012, 09:23 AM
I have a BM 3.5+ currently running on my system as well. It's WAY undersized for my 250 gallon setup (I brought it over from my 80 gallon setup temporarily) but it's non-stop skimming while I wait on the bigger skimmer to arrive. It was the same way - very wet to start with, but once it broke it, it skims well!

rrasco
Wed, 6th Jun 2012, 09:37 AM
I love my NAC 9, even though I've only run it on a non-stocked tank so far. I bought it for the 210 but ended up using it on the 105. I think it's a little overrated for that tank. :bigsmile:

LuckySingh
Wed, 6th Jun 2012, 10:09 AM
I am using nac 9 along with deltec ap851....my water volume is around 300 gln including sump ...nac 9 pulls non stop nasty stuff out of my tank and I love it..thou it was very hard to dial in the beginning and took about a week for it to break inn

350gt
Wed, 6th Jun 2012, 11:54 AM
Good to hear you solved the problem, I have heard nothing but good things about the BM skimmers. Is the hippo going into the display afterall?


Me to, did another water change last night and this morning the tank looked even better..

Aa soon as I can get the hippo to start eating he will go into the display, he is munching on all the algae that's left in the frag tank but has yet to try anything frozen.