My skimmer outlet was pushing out a massive amount of bubbles, including micro-bubbles into my refugium, which in turn were being gobbled up by my return pump and pushed into my display tank.

Although micro-bubbles won’t cause too much of an issue for your livestock, they are unsightly and annoying. The bubbles make it look like you have debris flying all around your tank, which let’s face it, none of us want to see.

As is fairly standard these days, I started reading about “micro-bubbles in an aquarium” online and I was soon able to narrow down the culprit to my skimmer, apparently, it is quite a common issue within the saltwater hobby. Thankfully, there were lots of tips and tricks available to help try and reduce the number of bubbles, if not completely remove the issue.

Out of all of them, the one that made the most sense to me was to put a piece of plumbing tube over the outlet with a 90 degree bend at the bottom of it. The idea is to trap the bubbles in the tube, the bubbles are forced to the top of the straight bit of pipe as they can’t go down the pipe far enough to exit via the 90 degree bend. With this being said, you need to ensure the top of the straight bit of tube is out of your water so the bubbles are actually popped and removed.

I don’t think I have explained this very well, so here is a picture or two to hopefully explain the process a bit better.

  • Solve Micro-bubbles Caused By Skimmer
    Solve Micro-bubbles Caused By Skimmer
  • Solve Micro-bubbles Caused By Skimmer

So as you can see, the pipe is slightly bigger than the skimmer outlet, it sits about 1cm above the water line and extends right the way to the bottom of the sump.

I can say that this method was quick, easy & it worked an absolute treat! My tank is now micro-bubble free! It has not had any ill-effects on the performance of my skimmer, it all seems to be working great. For a quick, easy fix, try this method first.