Is My Filter (Hayward DE) not working?

I have hayward DE 6000 filter and have an inground pool cleaning system (polaris caretaker 99 pop-up system).
We have few palm trees around the pool and they have these seeds coming down all the time.
I have two skimmer openings. I assume the water which comes through the first skimmer, goes to the second one and gets sucked in by the pump? The first one has a basket with wide spacing net, and the second one has finer one. Or probably they are both connected directly to the pool and not one after the other? I can see flow in both of them.

My problem is that these palm seeds gets through these skimmers and even comes out of the filter and gets clogged in the cone strainer right at the pop-up systems valve dome. I have to take apart the dome valve every hour or so and clean it out or else the pop-up system does not get the water and funtion. Does it mean that the filter grids are broken? or have holes in them? Is there any other possible way those seeds can end up at the pop-up system strainer (I think its placed after the filter)? Thanks!

If something much larger than a few microns is getting through your filter and coming out the other side, you've definitely got a problem with it. You could probably open the filter and physically examine them to find out for sure.


Just a thought, but you haven't inadvertently set it to bypass or anything like that, have you?

I used to think that when I backwashed, some of those palm seeds(needles) might have gone inside the grids and they are coming out, but its been more than a week since I started observing this. So doesnt seem like that.

About the valves, I am not that sure if I am doing something wrong there. I have attached a picture of our setup.
As much as I could see there doesnt seem like a bypass where it bypasses the filter, correct? This is exactly how the valves are set now.
One thing is on the returns I can see that there are 4 pipes going out,
1. to return 2. to water feature 3. to pop-up cleaner . I dont know if the 4th one is going to the heater? So what happens if I close that one?

Appreciate your time.

http://i49.tinypic.com/dxcmfn.jpg