Simple protein skimmer design

[tigerman66]

Hey gang.    In the attached photo who can tell me how the tank water gets out of this skimmer body?  Of course it goes in (up) the bottom, gets mixed with bubbles from the wood diffuser and then what?  Seems to me only a small amount of tank water is treated with the bubbles.

[dandelion]

There probably won't be very much active exchange between the water in the cylinder and water outside. There may be some turbulent and diffusion at the mouth that brings water in inefficiently but I don't see any dedicated pumps/powerhead that circulates the water inside.

[tigerman66]

Just what I thought also.  Almost useless this way.  What if I added bigger bubbles below to force water upward from the tank and made a hole on the side up top to let some tank water out ?  Sounds feasible to me.

I own this and have it in a 20 gal long salt water.  It does produce skimmate.  Just concerned not much tank water is getting treated.

[xiaoxiy]

On 4/14/2017 at 7:34 PM, tigerman66 said:

Just what I thought also.  Almost useless this way.  What if I added bigger bubbles below to force water upward from the tank and made a hole on the side up top to let some tank water out ?  Sounds feasible to me.

I own this and have it in a 20 gal long salt water.  It does produce skimmate.  Just concerned not much tank water is getting treated.

I wouldn't go as far to say that it is almost useless. The design is very similar to a Mame skimmer, which has really good skimmer efficiency in <20 gallon tanks.

[MainelyReefer]

That certainly will uptake fresh water from the tank, you'de be surprised by the flow created by bubbles in a tube.  At my job I build and sell whole house reverse osmosis systems and in the holding tank we have an ozone bubbler with a simple diffuser stone like that and it circulates the tank enough to sanitize 14000 gallons per day.  I bet it's circulating and exchanging plenty of water and also the mame skimmers are proven and operate very similarly to your skimmer

[tigerman66]

Thanks for giving me hope.  It does produce skimmate I just don't know how much is protein.  I do have lots of tank surface gunk that my surface skimmer doesn't seem to help much.  

[Reefkid88]

Don't over think it too much. The design has been around for probably 20 years and has proven itself in basically every condition and tank size. 

 

 In my 2g cube sps pico,I ran a skimmer that was air stone driven and the same style as Mame,and that thing pulled some BLACK skimmate out of my tank. There is a turn around rate,but its so subtle you don't see it.