Neptune Aquatics

Wet Skimming after Epoxy or Red Slime remover

H2OPlayar

Supporting Member
Hello BAR,

In my journal I wrote a little bit about "heavy wet skimming" using Chemiclean. While listening to "Reef Therapy" by Jake Adams, I came across this section. It starts at 22:00 and they talk a bit about what I do with my system in removing surfactants.

What I do is first, I stop my carbon reactor as carbon likely bonds to the Chemiclean. I the add ~1/3 - ~1/2 the dose that the box says for my tank. That causes my skimmer to froth up, so I take a tube from the drain hole and run it into a bucket, inside of a larger catch so the bucket can overflow. I then replace the wet skim with fresh salt water and keep the system going until I have changed out as much water as I want to. If the skimmer has slowed down and I want more water out, I add more Chemiclean. Make sure you do not add more than the box recommends for your tank. I don't know what would happen, but I suspect there is a reason they give you the dosing they do and this is what caused the issues others have reported with CC. Near the end, the skimmer will be making very clean and fine bubbled foam at this point, so I remove the drain line and let the skimmer operate overnight before turning my carbon back on.

My new Reef Octopus Regal skimmer doesn't overflow as nicely as my Vertex Omega skimmer did. I suspect that is due to the fact that the Omega skimmers were designed to make as many bubbles as possible, while the Reef Octopus skimmer makes a much finer bubble that can be tuned due to the DC design on the pump and finer bubble plate.

Does anyone else do this, or have any thoughts?




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It's been a little while since I've run chemiclean, but when I did, I just removed my skimmer cup and let the froth go right back into my sump (put a deli cup over the open top of your skimmer to keep it from making a mess). The reason being, if whatever is causing the froth is an active ingredient in chemiclean, then it's being pulled out of the system. The counter argument would be, if what's causing the froth is just a formulating agent, then no worries about removing it. What I don't like about these types of treatments is ingredients generally are not listed, so we can't easily make decisions like this.
 
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