air bubbles when vacuuming

[saltwaterpool]

I have an 18000 gallon above ground salt water pool. Two years old. Everything fine until this morning. When I try to vacuum (manual vacuum) there are bubbles in the pump within 1 minute and within 3 minutes I have to completely stop. I checked the vac hose for holes - none, and can't find anything anywhere else. Any ideas?

[mr_clean]

If you primed vac hose before hooking up to skimmer and your pump still does not keep prime, it's the vac-hose.
You can retest it, by leaving vac-hose in water (primed) when pump is reprimed hook it up again. If it happens again vac-hose.

[chrisinspring]

Tighten the pump lid or re-lube the lid o ring. The air leak is coming before the pump.

[nobody in particular]

Happened to us, too. Turned out our overflow pipe wasn't working right, so air got in that way.