[slief]

Originally Posted by clorox

Thanks Scott.

The skimmer is on an acrylic platform I built to raise it by about 2.5 inches.
The current water level is just shy of 7 inches which is within RE recommended level according to the manual. I had to build the platform because my sump doesn't have water level adjustments and without raising it it would have been in over 9 inches of water.

Should I close the volute pipe to compensate for the lower organics and decrease the power setting?

The reason I have to keep that power setting is because of the light fish load. Only one foxface, 6 blue eyed cardinals, a Centropyge bispinosa and a Salarias fasciatus.

The bigger source of organics comes from one of my large carpet anemones soon to be joined by an even larger one. More fish will follow, but yeah right now it is lightly stocked.

Tough call. Looking at your photos, you have some nice foam there. Your lower water level necessates the higher pump speed. I assume given your pump speed that the wedge pipe is mostly open. While your sump level is within range, "ideal" depth is 7.75 to 8.5". Heck, even 9" is still within range but ideal depth is kind of dependent on things like salinity and load but it's also impacted by pump speed. Given your low load, I would probably try removing the stand so the skimmer is in 9" of water, open the wedge all the way and reduce the power down to 27 watts and see what that does. If the foam looks nice but the water level is low, you can close the wedge pipe some or increase the pump speed slightly. Obviously you can always go back by putting the stand back in and increasing the power back to your existing settings but I think you might get even better results and you will certainly increase contact time with the lower flow through the skimmer. Kind of 6 of this a half a dozen of the other. It's obviously working well right now given your sump depth and low load but I can't help but wonder if it could work even better even though that may be hard to imagine. Once you load is increased you would be better suited with a depth of 8-8.5" and the lower pump speed that should be somewhere between 27 and 32 watts depending on load and depth..