youngtimothy's DIY skimmer

[youngtimothy]

I wanted to use up some of my accrylic scraps, so I thought I'll start a skimmer! I went about it all backwards I made the collection cup first then then the cone. the cup is to small and the cone is to tall but this was the material I had! I'm going to cut the cone down at some point, then put it all together and see if it works! the cone was easier to make then I thought. I drew a pattern cut the accylic the made a form. next time I will use posterboard for the form. heated the accrylic in an oven at like 150 degrees till it was pliable, rolled it up and put in the form, let it cool and wala! we have a cone!

sorry about some of the pictures the bad ones are from my phone!

 

[swannyson7]

Looks great! Judging by the build quality, I'm guessing that you've worked with acrylic before, right? Have you decided on a pump yet?

 

[youngtimothy]

Looks great! Judging by the build quality, I'm guessing that you've worked with acrylic before, right? Have you decided on a pump yet?

not a whole lot I'm a toolmaker by trade and machine a lot of different materials. as for a pump not sure I could use some suggestions!

 

[swannyson7]

If you keep it at that height, you're gonna need a pretty big pump! You could probvbly get by with an askoll or a bubble blaster if you run it in a fairly deep sump, but I wouldn't worry too much about the small collection cup. I would just drill a drain hole, and thread it with a tap & die set for a screw in barbed fitting (make sure you wrap it with teflon tape to prevent leaks). Then you won't have to worry about it overflowing. What size system are you planning on putting it on?

 

[youngtimothy]

its for a small some where around 30 gallon + sump frag system (another post) I'm going to cut the cone down its around 20" now I'll cut about 6" off.

 

[swannyson7]

If you cut off 6", you could probably get away with a Sicce PSK-2500 or PSK-1000 if you wanted to save $$. You could do the pinwheel upgrade or mesh mod to increase performance if needed as well

 

[dougers31]

Nice work! I like the quality look of the skimmer cup. Your socks look a bit dirty though

 

[swannyson7]

What did you use for the flange to attach the collection cup? It's hard to tell from the pics

 

[youngtimothy]

Nice work! I like the quality look of the skimmer cup. Your socks look a bit dirty though

never noticed my feet in there!

 

[youngtimothy]

What did you use for the flange to attach the collection cup? It's hard to tell from the pics

I used large plactic union machined down and added o-ring groove. if I cut the cone down I will have to do something different.