210 reef - taking it slow

When we built the house in 2012 my wife bought me a 210 tank. Immediately I knew it was going to be in a wall and designed around it. Being a novice I've worked closely with my LFS and we set a plan on equipment and began. Over the next couple years, I've been slowly purchasing equipment and now, although the equipment is not complete, I have started this adventure. Here are a few pictures of when water started on Nov. 22nd this year going into the tank and what it looks like 3 weeks later.

 

Lookin good!

 

Looks awesome! Nice work!

 

Nice job. Love the accessibility you have.

 

I've got problems with a lot of air bubbles in my tank. Some are coming from the skimmer but the larger are coming from one of the returns and I can't figure out why. I've pulled it out and ran it through a fresh water solution just cause and it works great, put it back in the tank and large bubbles again. The line is getting air somewhere. Detective work in my future

 

I can't tell from pictures, is your pump submerged internal or external? Your returns seem to be very close to the surface, try to lower them in the water a bit more.
Another thing you can try is to put some kind of mechanical filtration in front of your intake to the pump, I had this issue with old setup, dump was not large enough for the volume of water passing through it. But going this route change them religiously

 

Both pumps are internal. Another note, I've only had to clean out the skimmer once otherwise there's never anything in the cup. I've been told by the LFS that it's a new system and that the skimmer is causing the microbubbles and it'll take a "little" time to break in. The LFS guy that set my system up drilled a hole on the underside of the elbow for those returns, to eliminate suction, but when I plug that hole the large bubbles disappear. Do I need that hole?

Also, I do have mechanical filtration in place already and clean them daily to help out. They don't!

I'll lower the returns and see what that does. Thank you!

 

You should have them, they are a vacuum breaker to prevent the water from siphoning to your sump. But yes you can plug them and I would recommend to do so, but next time you are going to do a water change lower the water more (store some if needed) and drill holes about 1/2" lower, a very small hole, what size are the ones he drilled?

 

The problem that they are creating is a disturbance on the surface, how close to the top of the tank is your current level? Are you able to adjust level to a higher level?

 

tank looks awesome!