My 6" by 30.5" DIY Recirculating skimmer...

[The Propagator]

Oh but it IS kicking btt right away my young patewan !!

 

MUHOO HAHAHAHAHAHAaaaa !!! I'm LOVING IT !!!

 

Ok so here are some pics of the trial run today.

SUCCESS !!!!

 

Mind you I still have not secured the bottom on so there are MASSIVE micro bubble and pressure leaks around the bottom.

Over all though I am VERY please with the stock venturi as well as the over all performance thus far in its "beta" stage.

The second pic down is just after I dumped in 1/4 cup of black gunk my seaclon epulle dout of my 29g. THATS RIGHT A SEACLONE ! I dont know why or how but this one works like a CHAMP and pulls black gold out !

 

 

5 minutes after turning it on dumping in some skimmate and making minor adjustments....

 

 

3/4" uniseal on feed line ( No runs no drips no erros !)

 

 

A peek in the top secret test tub LOL!

MICRO BUBBLES AWAY !!! I expected alot at 1st because some adjustments and permenant fixes still need to be performed yet.

AND it hasnt even broken in yet.

 

 

Outlet sample to see exactly how bad the micro bubbles actually are that are making it out of the return really are.( because the bottom isn't sealed up yet)

 

 

30 minutes worth of skimming

 

 

 

 

I am SUPER pleased with it thus far !!

 

And fellas I can only go by what I have now because I haven't used any other type of venturi yet but with the way I attached it this venturi ROCKS !

( I 'll get into exactly what I did in a bit)

[Travis]

Meh...

 

Haha, lookin' good man.

[The Propagator]

DIY? Tunze? What is that?

[Travis]

Tunze DOC Nano, stock.

[The Propagator]

BASTAGE !!!

 

BUT Look at the skimate mine is pulling out versus run time and the fact that its the very 1st time its been run with no tweaking, and I havent even performed the mesh mod yet.

[Travis]

Yeah, your skimmer is awesome, but it may only be pulling out the dirt/dust in the PVC and then will go through a break-in period.

[Maeda]

I noticed that the mesh mod really helps consistancy more then skimmate production.

 

Nice job prop! Thats about what I get from my octo(150 on a 40g system with a lowwwww bioload).

 

What kind of system is your DIY on? I can't wait to see it break in.

 

What was the total cost getting to this point?

[The Propagator]

So far this is my cost with the pump: $173.51.

I dont think I need to buy anything else though.

( that price is also including a gate valve for the return I have comming in the mail)

It will be ran on my 100g prop tank and then eventualy on a 250 - 300 gallon 2 tub frag system.

I dont want it to skim heavly so I didnt go to big.

I like my frag system to have some "funk" in it but not enough to register you know what I mean?

I feal the more food the better for my frags.

I just keep up on water changes, and test bi-weekly

 

 

Travis,

That is NOT comming from dirty PVC homeslice

Thats the 1/4 cup of skimmate I poured in it from my seaclone.

I have a vid of me pouring it in I have yet to load onto photobucket or I would have posted it for proof. Its comming though.

And that skimmate came up dirty like that 30 minutes after I dumped the skimmate into the 13g container its sitting in.

(The skimmer holds about 2.5 gallons it self)

I let it rip with CLEAN pvc in a CLEAN cntainer for 10 minutes before I dumped in any skimmate in and before I even hooked up the air line to the venturi which is sumberged.

I would say less than 1% of what you see is from the inner walls or the container.

[The Propagator]

Ok SO I was screwing around with my skimmer some more and found a way to further reduce microbubbles.

I put a 90 deg elbow on my feed line and pointed it straight down.

Then I atatched about a 3" section of 3/4" PVC and another elbow to it facing it in such a way as to cause a swirling action.

This seems to have greatly helped reduce micro bubbles.

[Maeda]

I might try that on my octo.....

Im getting TONS AND TONS AND TONS of bubbles.

 

Did you look at the DIY red dragon post on RC Yet?

 

This is a good deal for a recirc at 170ish$. Personally. the jury on recirc is still out in my head though (unless you need an external skimmer of course)....

[ProFlatlander15]

You got luckier than me with the Uni-Seals Prop. I just installed two on my kalk reactor and they leaked like crazy. I had to silicone the sh*t out of them and I'm keeping my fingers crossed...good job on the skimmer though, well done!

[RBuddha]

good job man. I never got back on this thread but it looks like you made a kick azz skimmer

[The Propagator]

THanks fellas !

 

I made a flange today ( RANDY) LOL!!

Randy Stacey put that bug in my ear when I asked him about cubes to use as atchment location for the bottom.

I had to do it !

Its not pretty because I did it with my dremel but it works.

 

 

 

[The Propagator]

Well I was faced with a new problem today !

Where the fook do I find gasket material?

NO NEED !

I simply "plained" down and smoothed out all edges to mate flush then used a little bit of silicone in betwene the flanges. and I do mean a little.

Like 7 drops about the size of a dime all around it.

I tightened up the bolts and VIOLA a no leaking monster !

 

 

I did another test run, only this time I also lowered the recirc pump out put about 2 inches lower in the chamber and installed a "T".

Then I faced the input on the recirc pump downward a little to suck up micro bubbles and it WORKS LIKE A CHARM as well as adding about 2 inches more air to water reaction time ( in other words more bubbles with less micro bubbles).

Brand new skimmer and I am getting minimal micro bubbles at best.

 

Here are a few pics of the 2nd "grub tub" test.

This time I dumped in about half a gallon of skimmate from all of my skimmers then let it sit out side for two days in the sun to spark the nasty stuff growing for some REALY funky water to test it out on

The tub is a 13g tub filled to about the 10g mark.

Here it is after the 2 day bake in the sun with 1/2 gal of watery skimmate mixed in it.

EEEEWWWW SMELLY !!!

 

 

Here is the collection cup of the skimmer litteraly less than 20 minutes after it was turned on.

 

 

Tub water after about 2 hours:

 

 

Tub water after 4 hours:

 

 

 

 

A pic of the outlet so you can see I am not lying.

Virtualy no microbubbles.

 

 

Bout .5 gallon of skimmate pulled out in less than 6 hours.

 

 

Now its skimming slower.

When a heavy load is present it goes bizerk-o and skims heavy, after its has about skimmed the majority of it all out it goes back to normal or nothing until somthing is introduced to the tub to skim.

Any one else experience this?

Bubble size problem maybe?

[shouldabenacowboy]

That is impressive....to skim that nasty bucket in 3hrs

 

 

SBC

[The Propagator]

In reality I think it was closer to 5-6 hours though.

I guestimated LOL!!!

My wife was like.."yeah right ! I was hear remember!"( changed it above.)

Its now hooked up to my reef and running for realz.

So we'll see what the skimmate looks like tomorow.

( YES I meticulously cleaned the skimmer and all parts BEFORE placing it on my reef. Inside the pipes as well as the recirc pump.)

 

I REALY need to do the mesh mod and add the gate valve though.

I am getting large bubbles and some serious turbulance near the cone that seems to be disrupting the foam collum causing it to fall prematurely and stay "wet" ya know what I mean?

[Maeda]

Now its skimming slower.

When a heavy load is present it goes bizerk-o and skims heavy, after its has about skimmed the majority of it all out it goes back to normal or nothing until somthing is introduced to the tub to skim.

Any one else experience this?

Bubble size problem maybe?

 

This is normal, from what I understand. You can't skim whats not there.

My skimmer is like this too. ONCE in a while i'll clean the neck and it'll skim again, but its probably because you got nothing left in there.

 

i'm so jealous you got then uniseals to work....

[The Propagator]

I think I might know why you didnt have any luck with them.

It could be one of 4 things actualy.

 

1: You could have used a drill or a drill press who's chuck was out of round?

2: You may not have got a flush cut becase you drilled to fast?

3: You may not have deburred the holes and made sure they were as close to round as possible before inserting the uniseals?

4: You may not have inserted the Uniseal far enough into the tube?

 

I made sure my chuck was as true as I could before drilling, then I took my time so the acrylic was cut away and not melting away so it wouldnt warp.

I then made sure I deburred and flushed off the I.D. of the bore, and I made sure I inserted the Uniseals into the tube as far as I could get them to seat with the pipe installed.

 

The trick to get them to seat is to install the pipe into the seal with your hand on the back side. Put a little bit of dishsoap on the pipe and wiggle it right in. The soap will squeegy off as the pipe slides through.

Then while still supporting the back side of the uniseal try and push the uniseal as flush with the tube as you can get it. If your carefull it WILL flush up on at least two sides on 1" or larger pipe. Thats all you realy need it to do though. I got all 3 of my 3/4" seals to flush up 360 deg.

[The Propagator]

Well today its making much more consistan bubble size and creating a much better "drier" foam collum.

It seems to be shifting slowly from a thick dark yellow skimmate to the nasty brown stuff you see in a seasoned in skimmer.

 

I bet in a couple weeks it will shift to the realy thick black stinky crap.

Its all ready super stinky crap its pulling out, just not so dark.

[Daemonfly]

Good to hear it's working well.

[The Propagator]

Thanks Dae !

Given my luck I was worried the damn thing would blow up as soon as I plugged it in or somthing LOL!!

[Lingwendil]

WOW...

 

 

You left a sewer tank out in the sun... On purpose.

 

Props to props yo.

 

Seriously goo job so far. Has the skimmer been introducing a lot of microbubbles after your mod, or would you say that it's comparable to stock skimmers?

[The Propagator]

Which Mod would that be?

I havent installed the gate valve yet, or the Mesh mod.

 

I get ZERO (0) microbubbles. ( If there are any it is VERY minute at best)

 

Yup I left it in the sun for 2 days on purpose.

It was the only way I could figure out how to simulate a huge bioload on a large system with out actualy setting one up yet.

It pulled out ALL of that garbage and left sparkling clean water.

 

Since I have been running it on my 100g reef I have litteraly noticed HUGE clarity differences in my water collum.

I was runing a D&D Marine Terminator II recirc.

I though it was the shiz-nid when I 1st hooked it up.

Its impresive looking, makes alot of foam....but dosent pull out anything but pee water.

ONE YEAR after using it it still pulls out pee water !

 

DO NOT get one guys. for the same money you spend on that turd you can build a skimmer like this that out performs a reef devil.

( I am not kidding either).

 

The new skimmer I made will no doubt handle a 300g system.

It is absolutely pulling out even the most minute crap in that water collum. ( keep in mind thats with out a gate vale or the mesh mod installed yet.)

After I do the those mods this little sucker will REALY pull some crap out !

I realize it will only handle 300g under light load but I wont be skimming that heavly on my frag system any way.

 

So far i thas pulled out a 2 liter full of stinky dark brown crap and sludge.

I have pics I just havent uploaded them yet.

I will tonight.

[The Propagator]

Made use of the El' Crapo' skimmer body that came with my El' Crapo'

Proclear 150 wet/dry. It is now my skimmate collector LOL!

 

This is about 4 days worth of skimmate. ( its lighter at the top because the sludge and setiment has settled.)

 

 

Shook up and from the top down.

NASTY NASTY NASTY smelling rotten eggs garbage.

 

 

The heavier crap in the bottom

 

 

This little bastage is truely bad azz !

I cant believe it works this good with out a gate valve or the mesh mod.

and its not truely even broken in yet !

Think what it wil do with those mods !!!!

[The Propagator]

What?

I get nothing? No "OOHS" and "AHHS" ?

 

 

you suck

 

 

 

 

 

JOKE !!!!!!

 

 

It is REALY starting to take off now gang.

Its pulling out some absolute crap now.

Pics to come.....