Wetworx Nano-skimmers!!!

[Undertheradar]

 

Im of the impression that there are enough pics of how these skimmers are constructed and all I have to do is post a diagram like this as the rest is here somewhere already. If this is not the case, or you have more questions, let me know. The above skimmer is like the 15" one I use on a 40B. Its quite a capable skimmer, pulls about 150lph of air. I rate a skimmer for the most part, based on its lph... I like to have about 4 lph per gallon of water in the system as a minimum for a lightly stocked tank. I go 8 lph per gallon for a heavily loaded system.

[ReeferMo]

 

Im of the impression that there are enough pics of how these skimmers are constructed and all I have to do is post a diagram like this as the rest is here somewhere already. If this is not the case, or you have more questions, let me know.

 

 

Would this be the corresponding pic of your last diagram? If so, I think I can take it from there and figger out the details. One quickie, though: lph - liters per hour??? Or something else? Sorry it's so small. It came from one of your posts on page 8 of this thread.

 

 

[coolwaters]

i heard that most efficient skimmer is a tall one like 6-8+ feet tall....

but dam thats huge lol.

[Mitch529]

UTR with your recirc skimmer you mention that the intake flow needs to be around 50gph would an overflow in a fuge come close to this or is a pump required?

[Undertheradar]

ReeferMo, that is not the same design. Its a more recent one where the input and output position are swapped, so the inlet is up higher, and the outlet is at the bottom of the skimmer... yet the two are seperated by a baffle so it works. Ill look around for more pics besides this one...

 

Otherwise, Mitch529, I dont know how to respond to your question... I suppose the overflow in a fuge could come close to this if its in the 50gph range... you tell me!

[ReeferMo]

ReeferMo, that is not the same design. Its a more recent one where the input and output position are swapped, so the inlet is up higher, and the outlet is at the bottom of the skimmer... yet the two are seperated by a baffle so it works. Ill look around for more pics besides this one...

 

Yeah, I'm familiar with that pic of the pump and the electrical fittings. All set there. But I don't recognize the design of the other pic, or recall seeing that one anywhere. A little help there would be much appreciated. Oh, one more thing - was I correct in assuming the lph was liters per hour? If not, you'll have to throw me nugget there, too. Thanks.

 

Mo

[jpndave]

 

The holes on the 'bubble plate' should be 1/4", and rows of 3 or 4 holes wide (how ever many you think you can fit in. 6-8 rows should be plenty.

 

Ok, so this design, 1"fittings 3"x6"x24" skimmer size, 4"acrylic tube (already have some of this). What kind of lph will something like this pull? How crucial is the tangential input location?

 

I have a 36 gallon cube (21" cube of 3/8" acrylic) with about 20 gallons more in a sump. This is total capacity of the tank, not accounting for rock, sand, etc. Will this be good if heavily stocked?

 

I am looking for the most power efficient design and plenty of capacity. I assume the bubble ring adds efficiency, as do the mods on the pump and the recirc design. Will I have about "maxed out" efficiency?

[Undertheradar]

ReeferMo,

This is an older version of the recirc skimmer, where the output is up top and the intake is down below... like a deltec or H&S. I have found that the reverse design (posted here) works just as well if not better. In particular, it works better on shorter skimmers, like ones less than 16" tall, since it puts the output at the bottom of the skimmer for a longer dwell time.

 

I ended up developing that design a bit further, and came up with this...

Thats a bubble 'plate' er, rather 'pipe' on a rectangular skimmer. Its based on the same idea as the AC802. The innner pipe causes the water to enter the outer pipe at an angle, forcing it to spin (so no larger bubbles build up under flat surfaces). The bubble plate does cut down turbulence very well. That was the problem I had with these skimmers in the first place, and the reason I went with the bottom outlet.

As you can see maybe from the photos... the bubble 'pipe' greatly improved the performance by lowering turbulence.

[Undertheradar]

jpndave, the liters per hour (lph) of air will be in the 350-500lph range depending on the AC802 pump. I suggest 4 lph of air per gallon on a regular stocked tank, and up to 8 for a heavily stocked tank (of course, there are design methods that effect this, but in general). In your case, I usually only rate the main tank as well, not the system as a whole, since the sump doesnt contribute much to bioload usually, and may even have a fuge or other things which contribute to the skimmer's effectiveness. So 36gx8= 288lph... yeah... you're set. The bubble ring reduces turbulence in the main skimmer body. Turbulence causes bubbles that have attracted hydrophobic proteins to be disrupted... so yes, the ring improves efficiency. Its a feature first used by Klaus Jansen, founder of Royal Exclusiv and the Bubble King protein skimmers which use much larger bubble plates. I think Im just the first to figure out how to use one on a rectangular/HOB dimensioned skimmer by changing its orientation. And yes, the pipe needs to enter the 'disk' at a tangent. IF not that, you could have it enter straight, but then put an elbow on it so that the contents of the bubble 'disk' spins in a circle. You have to make sure to keep the water under the plate w/ holes spinning so no larger bubbles form or 'burping' happens. This is about the best design possible with an Aquaclear 802 to take advantage of its performance.

 

A tip on the bubble plate... use a 1/4" ceramic/spade bit to drill the holes. The holes end up very nice and this bit wont crack the acrylic as easily as regular drill bits (unless you have an actual acrylic bit).

[ReeferMo]

UTR - Hey, Thanks! If a guy can't get home from there - he can't get home! That gives me just about everything that I need to get started in the next day or two. Two things, though: In this pic, the labels are really hard to read. I can make out skimmer outlet, pump outlet, pump intake, and water in. I can't make out the other two labels.

 

 

The other thing is, what facilitates water moving through the skimmer? Do you use a separate pump to force water into the skimmer? I know that on some of your other designs (like the spraybar) water is being forced into the skimmer via the pump, then overflowing back to tank (or sump). This recirculating design, unless I'm missing something, appears that it would just continue to skim the same water in the column above the pump without any changeover - unless an outside factor forced the water movement. Like I said, I'm sure I'm missing something and as soon as you explain it I will have a D'oh moment. Anyway, thanks again. Your help has been much appreciated!

 

Mo

[civicsit]

I have a couple of questions...hopefully you didn't already answer these previously.

How much flow do you have on the input of these skimmers? (I think I saw something about 50gph, but I'm not sure)

Will the placement of the input disturb the flow of the bubbles, creating turbulence, or disturb the 'head' of the skimmate?

Also, could you just use pvc for the inner pipe for the bubble 'plate' or is there not a size that works for that?

 

BTW, I have always liked this thread and have built two previous versions of your skimmers. Keep up the good work! This one looks like it would be a good project.

[Undertheradar]

The flow rate of a recirc should be about 1.5x-2x the tank volume per hour. So for a skimmer that is designed to handle 40g, this gives us about 60-80gph. For a 30g, this is 45-60gph. Simple as that.

 

The placement is somewhat critical. With such a low flow going through the skimmer, its not really too hard. It takes effort to really cause problems with only 50-80gph on a 1/2" pipe. Just keep it below the collection cup, and the rest should fall into place because the collection cup itself prevents the head from being disturbed that much.

 

PVC? In what manner? I suppose it could, but I dont see how it would make things any easier... thats the only problem I see. Please go into more detail.. perhaps a diagram. If you mean on the pump inlet, to just use an elbow to 'spin' the contents of the 'bubble disk' then yes, you could... I just dont like putting elbows on mixing pump outlets because they have a tendency to hurt the pump's performance by adding back-pressure to the outlet. Thats all.

[civicsit]

Thanks for the info.

 

By using pvc, I meant that you could use pvc for the inside piece of tubing in the bubble 'pipe' instead of acrylic. In your pictures you have a small piece of acrylic tubing that you used for the inside piece of the bubble 'pipe'. I was just thinking that you could use pvc instead so that you wouldn't have to worry about drilling the acrylic pipe at an angle like you have, since pvc is so easy to drill and sand.

 

Just an idea.

[Undertheradar]

ahhh, that version, with the MJ1200. Sure, I suppose you could use PVC... its just since that first one, I have made new ones out of 100% acrylic, because the bond is so much stronger with the flat acrylic piece its attached to.

[Mitch529]

UTR, do you happen to have the part numbers of the conduit pieces used on the recirc skimmer? I went to home depot today and was only able to find metal pieces that even came close to your pictures, and even then they were different.

 

[Undertheradar]

yeah... they are in the thread here somewhere...lol.

 

The upc on the return piece is 034481043959

 

According to the internet's UPC database...

http://www.upcdatabase.com/item.asp?upc=034481043959

 

or

 

http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/14-47-...ree-602119.aspx

 

The intake is a 3/4" version.

[Mitch529]

Thanks, I will order these. Going to make the recirc version with the MJ600 pump

 

Edit: UTR, with the MJ600 and these conduit bends do you know about how far the pump sits off of the acrylic panel? I am trying to get some rough measurements for total size.

 

Thanks!

[Mitch529]

Actually off of the above... do you know the total width of the skimmer with the maxi-jet 600 on the side, with these plans the skimmer body is 2" wide. But how wide is the body + the pump on the side, I'm trying to figure out what kind of space I can fit it in and I am waiting on my parts to be shipped

[Undertheradar]

The pump and fittings add an extra 2-3/8" to the depth of the skimmer.

[Scucci]

Couldn't afford a new powerhead, but I had @ 4 of these little minijets laying around, so I just drilled one to see how it would work, works pretty well... surprised myself a little.

 

Anywho, just incase you're a packrat and broke too... here you go.

 

 

Thanks a million for the skimmer plans.

 

If anyone wants a picture of this guy running with the minijet 404, just lemme know.

 

Actually, just added one anyways. It's not broken in yet so no actual skimming so far, only been a few hours. And don't bother with how ghetto my tank looks, trust me... I know, and don't care. As long as what's inside is happy, then I'm happy. I'll make a display tank later when I get some more money, until then I'm more than happy just having a tank in the first place.

 

 

Th skimmer's sitting in the tank since I was having a little trouble with the water return. Figured I'd just play it safe and set it in the tank... I'll fix the return next time I'm at Home Depot (or Lowe's since our Home Depot SUCKS...)

[Sea Slug]

UTR , Have you made any CPR HOB Refugium knock offs ?

[midi]

UTR , Have you made any CPR HOB Refugium knock offs ?

 

Exactly what I was thinking. I'm going to try to mod my aquafuge 2 to insert one of these skimmers on the intake side. i think the intake from the tank could feed right into the skimmer. In the end it might be easier to just build hte whole fuge/skimmer combo from scratch. But I figure I'll try this first.

 

Jeff

[Mitch529]

Exactly what I was thinking. I'm going to try to mod my aquafuge 2 to insert one of these skimmers on the intake side. i think the intake from the tank could feed right into the skimmer. In the end it might be easier to just build hte whole fuge/skimmer combo from scratch. But I figure I'll try this first.

 

Jeff

 

 

Well I was going to do something like this... but I decided it best not to build the skimmer as 'part' of the HOB Fuge just incase it doesn't work well etc... So I just added a chamber for it kind of like the Sapphire Aquatics HOB Fuge, and I am just going to Y off of my Fuge feed into the skimmer with a valve so I can fine tune the flow.

 

[midi]

Mitch,

that's some awesome work, great job! Make sure you post some pictures of your recirc skimmer when you are done. Was this your first time working with acrylic?

 

Where did you order your fittings from?

 

Jeff

 

Well I was going to do something like this... but I decided it best not to build the skimmer as 'part' of the HOB Fuge just incase it doesn't work well etc... So I just added a chamber for it kind of like the Sapphire Aquatics HOB Fuge, and I am just going to Y off of my Fuge feed into the skimmer with a valve so I can fine tune the flow.

[Mitch529]

Jeff,

Yeah it was my first time working with acrylic, overall it was pretty easy to build... WeldOn #4 is kind of annoying to use with how thin it is but you get the hang of it really fast. I got my bulkheads from Drs. Foster & Smith and a LFS.

 

Mitch

 

Mitch,

that's some awesome work, great job! Make sure you post some pictures of your recirc skimmer when you are done. Was this your first time working with acrylic?

 

Where did you order your fittings from?

 

Jeff