After listening to the recent Reef Therapy podcast about protein skimmers i thought i should share with you all what i did to make my protein skimmer more efficient for my setup.
I was having a hard time adjusting the water level so that the skimmer would generate skimate without risking random overflows, it seemed like i was walking a fine line, i suspect because the skimmer is probably too large for my system/load.
I made an insert I could drop in from the top which reduces the volume in the skimmer neck area which has been forcing substantially more skimate into the cup. I've been running this setup since about May of this year and have been really happy with the results. This is not an optimized design, the tube diameter/length was a total shot in the dark, im sure i could tweak these parameters to get further improvement.
Here is a cross section showing how it goes together (Its shown with an o-ring groove on the bottom but i have not been using it - keeping it simple and works fine). Its also kind of nice because i can pull the insert out and clean it without needing to remove the whole cup from the skimmer.
Here are a few pictures of the insert along with a video of the skimmer in operation.
I was having a hard time adjusting the water level so that the skimmer would generate skimate without risking random overflows, it seemed like i was walking a fine line, i suspect because the skimmer is probably too large for my system/load.
I made an insert I could drop in from the top which reduces the volume in the skimmer neck area which has been forcing substantially more skimate into the cup. I've been running this setup since about May of this year and have been really happy with the results. This is not an optimized design, the tube diameter/length was a total shot in the dark, im sure i could tweak these parameters to get further improvement.
Here is a cross section showing how it goes together (Its shown with an o-ring groove on the bottom but i have not been using it - keeping it simple and works fine). Its also kind of nice because i can pull the insert out and clean it without needing to remove the whole cup from the skimmer.
Here are a few pictures of the insert along with a video of the skimmer in operation.