Dual Bean Animal Overflow with External Skimmer Plumbed In.

[HWDylan]

I have a big Reef Savvy tank being built currently and it has dual ghost overflows that I plan to use the bean animal style with. If I wanted to feed an external skimmer off of one of those siphon lines from one of the overflows will the skimmer being apart of that cause problems with the siphon restarting?

I plan to "T" off the skimmer and put a gate valve so I can control the flow to the skimmer.

I understand the basics of how bean animal works and I understand that people do plumb their skimmers into the drain line of their overflow with good results. Just a little worried that the siphon will not restart properly on the line that has the skimmer.

 

[Travis Stewart]

Have you thought about plumbing it to return line?

 

[HWDylan]

I have and I actually have a return pump large enough to feed a skimmer off of a manifold. That was my original idea and still my back up. I read that you can potentially get better skimmer results with feeding the drain (and dirtiest) water straight into the skimmer.

Perhaps this is not worth the added headaches in my case?

 

[KJAG]

Possibly and probably. For starters, The drains should terminate no more than one inch into the waterline, preferably less. Any more than this and you can experience profound cavitation issues.
The point being, any interference with either the open channel or especially the Full Siphon and you will likely have issues.

 

[KJAG]

If you attempted it, I definitely wouldn’t mess with the siphon. You could try altering the open channel, but a properly valved open channel only has a trickle of water spiraling down the sides anyways so it likely wouldn’t perform the task you desire for the skimmer.

 

[HWDylan]

Yea. This is more work than it is worth I think. Manifold it is.

Thank you for the input guys.

 

[KJAG]

Yea. This is more work than it is worth I think. Manifold it is.

Thank you for the input guys.

Just making sure that by manifold you don’t mean running all drains into common horizontal run?

 

[BigHildy53]

Assuming you have a sump, another option is to feed the external skimmer from the skimmer section of the sump and have the skimmer return go into the next chamber. This way you have complete control over the feed to the skimmer.