Protein Skimmer Problem

[kntry]

I built the protein skimmer that L5Vegan built in thread "protein skimmer-Awesome!" and I cannot get it to work at all.

My pond is new and full of DOC's. I'm doing water changes but decided to add the skimmer since it didn't cost anything to make. I already had the pipe.

I built the 2 protein skimmer using 4" pipe being fed from a 1/15 Lim 3000 gph pump. Water is pulled from a pool skimmer through about 3' of 1" pipe to 20' of 2" pipe, to the pump to 2" pipe with about 5' of static head.

I took the second skimmer off and concentrated all the water into the 1 skimmer pipe filled with Water Management Technology bio media. It's based on K1 but about the size of a quarter and 1/2" thick.

I have the skimmer sitting in a 150 gallon stock tank that has a shower sitting on top of it. The stock tank is about 1/2 covered with a thin layer of foam from the shower.

Any suggestions?

[Auntiesue]

I won't be all that much help here as I've not gotten around to doing the same thing yet. But from I understand about these PS is that water flow over the media is critical AND an open celled media is also very important. How well it works has something to do with how well the water "tumbles" down through the media. The more agitation the better.

I'm sure others that have experience with setting one of these up will have more to offer.

Sue

[kntry]

Thanks, Sue. I'm going to try to play with it this weekend but right now there is absolutely no foam at all.