Air Pump And Skimmer Prob

[novice]

i have two problems. no 1 is that iv'e noticed my air pump that is running my cc protein skimmer seams to lose power every so often. its fine for a few days then when i look in the skimmer couple of days later the bubbles have died down a bit. normaly inside the skimmer you can't see the tube that takes the water back to the tank. then the bubbles die down and you can see the tube. have a look at the pic you can see the green tube inside the skimmer
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x83/leeforum/pics054-1.jpg
then when i turn the pump up side down it get back to its normal power again. the pumps on a flat suface so theres nothing blocking the intake of the pump

no 2 prob. becouse of the fist problem it got me thinking. i had a spear air difuser for the skimmer. so i got the pump that im using for my under gravel filter
took one of the tubes off the air stone and connected the difuser and run the tube inside my skimmer. theres quit a big gap between were the foam forms and the water intake is. it fits well and it has doubled the foam build up in the
waste collection cup

1 i just want to no if the air pump for the skimmer is ok eney body else had this problem. its new and the right one for the tank so im thinking is it faulty

2 do u think its ok to run the two difusers in the skimmer.

[2manyfish]

I'll answer #2 first! Yes, it's fine to run two diffusers at the same time. Won't hurt a thing and will probably up the amount of skimmate you get out of there.
As to #1, well you could just have a faulty pump but first I would check to make sure nothing is being blocked. On my skimmer, the air intake tube (for a venturi) will often start to close up because of dust in the air or whatever. If I keep that clean the skimmer runs great. Check all your connections to see if the problem lies there. Take it apart and have a good look. IF you find nothing then you might need to buy a new pump (or exchange it if it's still under warranty).

thumbs2:

[novice]

thank you 2manyfish. i've check all connection,cleaned the filter on the air pump
and it was still doing it. so i took the filter out and split it in half and it working well now. i think you was right it must have been blocked. cheersthumbs2: sorry its taken me ages to reply.