Equipment Review and Discussion :: Eheim Surface Skimmer not working

[Lanna]

I have been a guest on this site for quite a while now, and want to thank everyone, especially VeipaCray for all the terrific advice. I have a 4 year old female RES who is, unfortunately, overgrown and currently on a diet. We've had Peanut since she was barely a half-dollar size vacation "tourist-trap" buy. My daughter, who was 14 at that time, talked me into Peanut because it "came with it's own house and food for a year Mom!" Having prior experience with aquariums and exotic fish, I asked the store owner if the water had to be dechlorinated and how often to feed it. His answer was "no" and "one or two food pellets a week". Yeah. Needless to say, thousands of dollars later, Peanut is now MY turtle.

Peanut is 8.5" long from tip to tail of carapice, lives in a 75 gallon long aquarium (third aquarium in 4 years, and she's in need of a bigger one), has a Eheim 2217 filter, an aquaeon heater, and an ATBA that-thanks to all the great advice and pics, is hanging securely on the end of the tank. The basking area has gone through several revisions in the last year and a half. I started with a floating dock, upgrading as Peanut grew, to PVC pipe with flourescent light cover and the floating dock as a ramp to the wood ATBA I currently have-floating dock still serving as ramp. Because I figured out that Peanut was a girl, I added a sandbox to the ATBA and since then, the water quality has been spotty at best. There is a constant film of yuck on top of the water, which may have always been there since I feed her in the tank, but since I have only had the tank completely full for the past month, never noticed. I purchased an Eheim surface skimmer from Big Al's, and hooked it up with the required T-piece and extra tubing-just like the pictures in the directions...I have it directly across from the spraybar, and no matter what I do-it is completely empty of water. No suction. At all. I've thoroughly cleaned the tubing, canister filter, sucked on the output hose (I know-yuck) and the canister filter is working beautifully, but the skimmer isn't working at all. I've taken it apart, put it back together, fiddled with the doohickey that switches filtration from surface to underwater, with absolutely no luck. Once, I got a little water to come up from the bottom tubing about 2 inches, and then it quit. I don't know whether to just bite the bullet and buy a second canister, or if there is any suggestions that anyone here has. Any help you guys can give me would be appreciated. I'll try to post pictures as soon as I figure out how

[steve]

Hi Lanna. I have used other surface skimmers before but not the Eheim one. I can't tell how it works compared to others, but my turtle created too many strong waves or just attacked it to keep it operating smoothly.

Is there a way you an position the spray bar above the surface? It doesn't need to be much to effectively agitate the surface. A bubble wand will also do the trick. What's the water temperature? If it's too warm, it would encourage more skin shedding.

[Lanna]

Steve, thank you for your reply. I didn't even think of the water temperature and skin shedding...it's actually at 78-80, according to the thermometer. I'll try turning the heater down a bit and see if that helps. I've got the spray bar pointed just under the surface-the noise tends to drive me nuts, but I will try it at the surface and see if that helps. Thank you again and I'll let you know in a few days how it worked

[steve]

A bubble wand is pretty quiet if you want to give it a try.