Skimmer Question

[readingbabelfish]

Hello all,

I have a Coralife Needle Wheel Super Skimmer 220g. I set it up in my sump. It runs great. However, if I have a power outage, the sump fills up with water to a certain point. All is good so far, but when the power comes back on, the super skimmer has too much back pressure on the outlet tube and just ejects all the pump's water into the chamber, filling up the collection cup and over flowing it. I know there is a drain on the cup, but in order to drain all the overflowing water, I would need to put the hose into like a 10 gallon tote in order to catch all the water until the level gets back to normal. That's not to mention what would happen if all that water left my sump setup and exposed either the skimmer pump or the return pump. Is there any way around this problem? I know I could hang it on the sump, but there is not enough clearance to do that. I don't want to hang it on the tank either. Can I do something with that outlet hose or something? Thanks.

[ibefishy]

I had the same problem with my CSS. The only way I found to deal with it was to unplug the skimmer until the water level went back to normal in the sump. The problem with that is you may not always be around when the power goes out, or comes back on. I dont think the drain line on the cup would be large enough to drain the collection cup as fast as the pump would fill the collection cup. I know I had a few times when the collection cup overflowed and dumped all the skimmate back into the sump. It wasnt pretty but it didnt seem to hurt anything either, turned off the return pump and just let the skimmer run for an hour to gather everything back up.