Bored! So lets design a Skimmer!

[wanareef]

And some pix's of the skimmer out of the water :eyebrows:

Would you think a "cone" transition would be better or not needed with the Boss hogg?

Good work

 

[Guerry]

I do plan to make a cone design, what have here was quick just so I could start testing air diffusers and pumps

 

[mojoreef]

Mike

I'm more of a visual kind of guy - can you shoot a pix of it, please.

Always had problems with those darn word problems in math, if I can see it, I can fix it

Kind of a crappy picture, but it should give you the idea.

Awesome Guerry!
Any pictures of the boss-Hog micro pore diffuser

Ok so these are all the micro pores, the hog is the short fat one in the middle and the double hog is just above it.

Would you think a "cone" transition would be better or not needed with the Boss hogg?

You can have a cone if you wish, I found that they came into being because of the overall crappyness of the skimmer being produced. You have to look at the skimmers that use the cone, they are chained with the fact they need to use the feed pump as a source for air (needle wheel or beckett) So they run into an inherent problem, the more air they produce the more contact time and dweel time and they loose, so in order to have something close to 5 to 10 seconds in the skimmer with water (which is a joke) they have to ramp down the air/water flow and thus they have a hard time pushing the foam out, they counter this by reducing the size of the skimmer tube (cone it) just to get the foam out. Well my opinion anyway.

I've been threw three air pumps so far first was an luft then an ecno 1 38lpm and now an Alita AL-15SA which is by far the best yet but have an AL-40 48lpm pump on the way to really kick it in the butt

Yea but you never tried the Super Luft, lol Anyway the Alita is a very nice pump, but a little pricey at 150 per. I have been running air stones for decades so this isnt anything really new for me. The concept of this thread was in reply to alot of emails/PM's I get all the time from folks that had pricey skimmers that were not doing what they were advertized to do, so what I was really looking for here was to make a skimmer, either from scratch or to be retro fitted for alot cheaper then what is being sold in the market place.

So here is what you get with this. Because the air for the skimmer is being run by a air pump you have no need for the pricey needle wheel pump and that alone drops the overall price. But more importantly you are not chained to that pump to make air, so you can run anything from a cheap 200gph powerhead to a bleed line off the tanks sump input line. With this you can dictate the contact time to be anything you want. Also the air and the water no longer come in at the same point, if an air bubble is coming in with the water mole how is the air bubble mechanically seperating the proteins from the water molecule?? Some say at the needle wheel?? (Ooookaaayyy) this way you can have all the air come from the bottom and leave via the top, then have all the water enter the top and leave via the bottom...now their you have a bombardment !! all the water must go through the curtain of continuous curtain of air...good stuff.

Anyway the most important thing is that for the cost of 60 bucks for a super luft and 55 bucks for the dual hog stones you have the ability to put up to 40 LPM of sir into the skimmer, getting proper contact/dwell time. Now go onto the internet and search out what the pricey skimmer give you for the dollar?? Oh yea they dont use per minute on their rating so 40 lpm = 2400lph


mojo

 

[Guerry]

your right about price of pump, it doesn't matter how you get there may it be a pinto or cobra I just like the ride of the cobra LOL

 

[TJL]

Great stuff you two, have not even got my new SWC wet yet and already thinking of building one of these.

Cheers, Todd

 

[wanareef]

Thanks Mike for the pix's.

The cone I was talking about was for the transition from the big chamber to the neck. Wouldn't it help with the bubbles continuing on an unobstructed course to the cup. Cones are nice but overrated to me.

 

[mojoreef]

I just like the ride of the cobra

Who didnt know I guy from Georgia would want to ride a snake???? lol

Great stuff you two, have not even got my new SWC wet yet and already thinking of building one of these.

See that was always part of the plan Todd, you dont have to give up your old skimmer, it can be 30 years old or out of the bag. YOu just add and modify.

The cone I was talking about was for the transition from the big chamber to the neck. Wouldn't it help with the bubbles continuing on an unobstructed course to the cup. Cones are nice but overrated to me.

I guess Wana, to me their more of the first sign of weakness. If you running the mixing chamber of the skimmer up to just past the transition then their is no obstruction. But its not like its going to hurt anything.


Mojo

 

[Guerry]

I've got a few PMs about the cone design and to clear things up I only plan on using small cone area to make transision between main skiimmer tube and collection cup riser. I woundn't want bubbles riding up the side of tube or increase in bubble speed. This design as is works better than any skimmer I've ever bought or built so now it's small mods. It always seems with anything I build that as I watch it work I find little things to make it better or so I think LOL

 

[wanareef]

So Guerry, what size tube and how tall for the reaction chamber will you end up using?

 

[TheKraken]

Guerry & Mike:

I see a water in port in the guerry skimmer and a air post but it looks like the intake is capped... Where are you injecting water? Mike, Same question on the skimmer with the Boss Hog. Where do you inject.

I think this is very do able with airstones so I will start getting parts for my build.

 

[Guerry]

So Guerry, what size tube and how tall for the reaction chamber will you end up using?

the body is 8"x22" with a 12"x12"x4" box for bottom, the 8" tube transitions to 4" before going into a 6" collection cup

 

[Guerry]

Guerry & Mike:

I see a water in port in the guerry skimmer and a air post but it looks like the intake is capped... Where are you injecting water? Mike, Same question on the skimmer with the Boss Hog. Where do you inject.

I think this is very do able with airstones so I will start getting parts for my build.

it's hard to see in pic's but there is a 1" inlet in back where water from overflow goes in, there are three inlets total one blocked and the other comes from Bio-pellet reactor

 

[mojoreef]

On mine I have the water coming in just below my neck, or basically as high up as I can. The air stones are as close to the bottom as I can get them, so right on top of the pipe for the water out put. The air comes in via drilled and tapped fitting through the cylinder. This way all the water has to pass all the air bubble.


Mojo

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Peppie]

Guerry,

That is awsome. I am glad you stepped up and put all this collaborated info into a working piece of art. My hat is off to you.
Do you really think you need to pump more air into it? dont you get to a point were there is to much air going in?

 

[wanareef]

the body is 8"x22" with a 12"x12"x4" box for bottom, the 8" tube transitions to 4" before going into a 6" collection cup

Using that 4" as the transition, does it really restrict the air too much or since this is an air powered skimmer the rules don't apply? What comes to mind is the "mesh mods" we do to get more bubbles and to make sure the neck is large enough that it does not restrict the flow of air. Just a little confused.

 

[mojoreef]

You got to get past that Wana. Dont worry about the foam column or the neck, those are after the fact things. Its all about the ration of air to water in the mixing chamber of the skimmer, the foam is a bi-product of what going on in their, if that makes any sense, lol

Let me put it another way. you have a skimmer body that hold 4 gallons of water, drain it down to 3 gallons of water and then add your air to bring the total column back up to the 4 total. Now you have the proper ratio. Then make sure you are having the water pass through all the air bubbles, so water in from top and out the bottom, air in the bottom and out the top. No add a water injection system (powerhead, drain line, whatever) that gives you a good amount of contact and/or dwell time.

Do these things and you have created a PROTEIN skimmer, the foam will come naturally as a bi-product of what you have done. You can have a 12 inch step down to a 10 or 6 down to 4 it not that big of a deal. If you are supplying the right amount of air and the bubble sizes are correct they will exit the top, even if you dont have a step down. In real world applications the foam is normally skimmed/scrapped off the top as the water flows past, so you could even just let the foam spill over the main tube into what ever right?? If you need more air to get the numbers get a pump that will give it to ya.

anyway I dont know if I made that any clearer or just muddied the water even more, lol


Mojo

 

[wanareef]

Mike, that's clearer. Just have to put aside everything I have learnt about building skimmers the conventional manner.

So to increase dwell time, I can lengthen the mixing chamber or use a big tube and/or use a small pump. I can build a skimmer like the present one, without the bubble plate, have 1" drain holes near the outside of the plate and have the stones sit in the middle of that same plate. Will I need a gate valve to control the height of the foam?

I have a leftover pc of 10" cast tube @ 26" tall, just neck down to 6" , add a cup for a total height of 36". Maybe that EcoPlus Commercial Air pump the Commercial Air 3 @ 65LPM with 3.9 psi might work and just valve it down if needed. hmmmm

whatcha think Mike?

 

[mojoreef]

Mike, that's clearer. Just have to put aside everything I have learnt about building skimmers the conventional manner.

Cool I was wood I made it even harder to understand. lol. Look at building a skimmer in two different way. First, protein skimmer is done base on the stuff we have dissed though out the thread and in the link I first provided. The second part is just fluid dynamics.

So to increase dwell time, I can lengthen the mixing chamber or use a big tube and/or use a small pump

Contact/dwell time is based solely on how much time the water spends in the skimmer being mechanically separated and then chemically reattached. So yes their are a number of ways to accomplish that but the simplest is just to reduce the flow going into the skimmer itself.

I can build a skimmer like the present one, without the bubble plate, have 1" drain holes near the outside of the plate and have the stones sit in the middle of that same plate. Will I need a gate valve to control the height of the foam?

Show me the skimmer pic again and maybe you dont have to start from scratch, another thing I wanted to try and get out of this thread was a way for folks to take an existing skimmer and convert it with a few simple mods. and yes on the gate.

On the air pump you have to make sure its quite, some are built for outdoors and can be load, like mine, lol the one guerry got is the quitest but I also believe the Super LUFT is quite to and only 60 bucks for 38 LPM.



Mojo

 

[wanareef]

Here's the pix

if I can sell it, I can use the $$ to buy the Super LUFT and other stuff. Plus I like building things anyway or just get the Commercial 3 and run the hose out from the garage. I have a Commercial 5 already on my phyto pharm so another noisy pump won't hurt, that much
total height 24" to top of cup, main body and cup 10" tube

Mike, one more thing, since there is no needlewheel pump or mesh mod feeding the skimmer, the water level in the sump will not affect the water level in the skimmer or will it? This skimmer will overflow and just pump water up and out of the cup if the water level gets too high and is sitting on a stand but that's doesn't stop that if I turn off the return pump and the level rises.

 

[Guerry]

Just my 2 cents, you can that work by installing a uniseal near top of skimmer and blocking off inlet from needle wheel pump or you might beable to use that inlet for air line going to air diffuser. I don't know how easy it will be to gut the bottom but you will want diffuser as low as you can get it without pulling air bubbles out the gate valve. I love to build things also and it might just be more fun to use your spare tube and build from scratch