Skimmer frustration and the Silver Lining.

More about the new skimmer...added some more sponge along the exhaust tube to stop the water from crashing back down into the tank. Now i can sit next to the tank and hear myself think again, always a good thing. Especially a good thing right now since i need to figure out a way to prevent all these bubbles from getting back up into the main tank.

The way this type of skimmer works is pretty simple. The pump injects water and air bubbles into a cylinder, the bubbles provide a surface for the waste to cling to and when the bubbles reach the top of the cylinder they break and waste falls into the collection cup. A great way to keep that waste from degrading the quality of the water.

The problem i now have is that it makes so many of these bubbles that some of them make their way out of the exhaust tube with the water and eventually back into the tank. So far i've made a small divider out of some egg crating and some filter floss and its helped some, but there's still some in there as you can see in this picture(if you click on it)...











The good thing that came from all this is that it forced me to figure out how to get a picture of it and made me realize just how awesome the 50mm lens we have is. I never really liked it before...turns out i just had to figure out how to use it. Now i don't know if i'll even bother using some of our other lenses. I know this picture isn't impressive in any way but i'm confident i'll have plenty of nice pictures in the near future to share now that i have at least half an idea of what i'm doing.

-m