- Hey, it's Thomas here
and today we're gonna be doing a basic set up
of this Bubble Magus Curve Elite from unboxing
to hauling up that nasty skim mate from your tank.
So by the end of this video,
you'll have it all put together,
dialed in and pulling out them dirty bubbles.
In the box you'll find the Curve Elite
skimmer body, the skimmer cup,
the Sicce Syncra skimmer pump, the bubble diffuser plate,
the Venturi, as well as the air silencer
and drain port plug already
attached to their respective tubing.
First things first, to assemble the skimmer
we're going to start by removing the base
from the skimmer body, so we can install the pump,
give each thumbscrew on the base a quarter turn
counterclockwise to loosen up the clips
and slide them to the side,
then lift off the body of the skimmer.
Next, remove the smaller side of the pump bracket
from the skimmer base by removing the two thumbscrews.
Then with the cord of the pump
facing the notch on the skimmer base,
hook the tabs on the bottom of the pump to the pump bracket,
then place the other half of the bracket that was removed
over the tabs on the other side of the pump
and screw it back down with those thumb screws.
Next, remove the cord grommet,
wrap it around the cord,
and slide the grommet back into place.
Now grab the bubble diffuser,
unthread the thumbscrew holding it together
and slide the threaded end of the pump adapter
through the hole in the base of the bubble diffuser
and then thread it into the output of the pump,
then place the top of the bubble diffuser
onto the base and thread in the thumbscrew
to hold it all together.
Now you can slide the skimmer body
over top of the pump and back down onto the base
so that the hole on the side of the skimmer body
lines up with the intake of the pump,
then slide the four clips back over top
and tighten down those thumbscrews.
Now you can grab that Venturi and slide it into the hole
in the side of the skimmer body,
until it slips over top of the pump intake,
you can wiggle it back and forth a little bit
while pushing forward to snug it up.
Now you can grab the red tubing,
the one that's attached to the air silencer
with the thinner tube will attach to the Venturi
and the air silencer itself will attach to the bracket
near the top of the protein skimmer
using that thumb screw that is threaded in
to the bottom of the air silencer.
Remove the red tube from the silencer first,
and then slide the nipple of the silencer
through one of the holes on the bracket.
Next slide that thumbscrew up into the other hole
and snug it up and then reattach the tubing.
The larger tube attaches to the drain port
on the skimmer cup.
If you don't plan to use the drain port,
feel free to cut a smaller piece of tubing
and add the plug to the end of it
so that you don't have so much tubing drooping down.
If you change your mind later on, no biggie,
you still have a long length of tubing left,
so hold on to it.
Last but not least, place the skimmer cup
on top of the skimmer.
Now with the skimmer assembled, it's time to get it running.
I do like to give my new equipment a quick rinse
before I put it in my reef system.
A quick pat down with RODI soaked paper towels
works pretty well to remove any potential byproducts
from the manufacturing process.
These Curve Elite skimmers are rated
for a water depth of between nine to 11 1/2 inches.
If your sump has an adjustable baffle,
set it for the middle of that rating
at roughly 10 1/4 to start.
If you don't have an adjustable baffle,
don't sweat it with most sumps,
your skimmer should be somewhere in that water depth range.
If you are falling short and the skimmer
is in water that is too deep,
you can always lift the skimmer up
using an adjustable height skimmer stand,
pieces of PVC pipe, or even some bio media bricks.
Now, while you're placing the skimmer
into your full sump, you'll need to hold it down
under the water and wait for it to fill,
otherwise it's going to try to jump back up at you
thanks to that trapped air.
Before you plug it in, take a quick second
to check the adjustment knob for the water level,
it should be set the max
so that the gate is fully open to start.
And now you can plug it in.
Before making any adjustments,
let the skimmer run like this for a few minutes
and once you see how high the foam is traveling in the body,
and at what point the bubbles are becoming larger
and slower, then you can start slowly closing the gate
to adjust the water height in the skimmer body
so that those large bubbles of foam
are making it into the skimmer cup and pop
just as they enter for a drier skim mate
or slide over and into the cup as an intact bubble
for a wetter skim mate.
If you're having a hard time adjusting it, don't sweat it,
for some of us it's going to take a while
for the skimmer to break in.
During that break-in period,
skimmers may overflow with salt water,
even with the gate wide open.
If this is happening, you can let it run
with the drain line plug out,
so it pours back into the sump.
After a day or two, that should stop
and you can return the drain plug to the drain line
on the cup and start making your water height adjustments
using the gear-driven gate to start collecting
that foamy skim mate, if seven days or more goes by
and you're still having that overflowing issue,
revisit the water height that the skimmer is sitting in
and maybe raise the skimmer up a little bit
to bring that foam production
or that mass of bubbles down inside the skimmer body
and then you can start adjusting the gate.
If your tank is brand new,
you may find you don't have much at all to skim
and that the skimmer isn't producing much foam,
or it looks like a boiling pot of water
rather than creating those larger standing bubbles.
As the bio load in your tank increases,
and you have more organics in the water,
you'll start seeing more foam production.
Alternatively, you can also add air control
to your skimmer with a simple inline valve like this one,
which gives you the ability to add less air to the skimmer
by closing the valve, which can often help
skimmer performance when there's less organics
in the water to remove, simply close the valve a little bit
at a time every 10 minutes or so until you start seeing
those bubbles get larger and larger,
and then you can go back and adjust that gear-driven gate
to collect the foam.
Now that your skimmer is running a treat
and pulling out all the disgusting skim mate,
make sure you remember to go back
and actually check on the collection cup
so that you can dump it out as it starts to get full.
Before you take off the collection cup to dump it out,
it's a good idea to unplug the skimmer
so you don't end up with foam spilling into your sump.
It's also a good practice to give the skimmer cup
a quick rinse and a wipe after dumping it out
so that the foam makes it up into the cup
and doesn't continue collecting on the inside of the neck.
For a more in depth look at all the do's and don'ts
of protein skimming, you can check out our video
on the top 15 mistakes that reefers make
with their protein skimmers,
save yourself the headache by avoiding the fumbles
we've already made by clicking right here.
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