BeanAnimal
Premium Member
Wow you eneded up with a tall neck on that thing.
5' Skimmer Build in Progress
- Thread starter tinygiants
- Start date
JC Pollman
Premium Member
Screwed Up
Screwed Up
My original design was to gravity feed the ozone reactor which would gravity feed the skimmer which would gravity drain into the sump. The rational: by gravity feeding out of the tank I get all of the bad stuff straight into the filters. And I wanted to feed the ozone reactor first because the water feed from the tank is not all that stable and water fluctuations really mess with a skimmer, so, having it go through the ozone reactor first seemed like a good idea. Initially everything worked great - skimmer was producing perfectly. Then things started to go south. I could not figure out why the skimmer was producing less and less until it was producing nothing at all. After a week of no skimmer I figured it out: the ozone was not fully reacting in its reactor (or the bleach it produces was more than expected) and the rubber parts of the skimmer were dissolving!!!!!!! I found this out when I cleaned out a foam filter and found it saturated with soft bits of black stuff.
I shut off the ozone and did my best to clean the skimmer, and this morning, after another week of no skimmate, the skimmer finally kicked in again.
I need to get the ozone working as the butterfly fish I want to add really need the higher orp, so this morning I went to Lowes and bought another 10 foot section of 6 inch PVC and will make another set of ozone reactor/skimmer filters. Fortunately it only costs $34. I thought about reusing the old pipes, but there are too many holes in them and it would look kind of crappy to fill them in. I am also going to make a few modifications to the setup, so making a new set is not a total loss. A couple of the mods:
1. Sump return pump feed will be T-ed off and feed the skimmer as well as return water to the tank.
2. The filters will have flat bottoms instead of the slightly rounded PVC caps
3. Both pipes will be 5 feet tall - I had to make the other ones only 4 feet tall due to the gravity feed and height of the tank
4. No rubber parts - except for the uniseals which showed no ozone problems. This means I am going to have to fabricate some flanges for the top. Fortunately, the husband of one of my wife's friends has a full-up workshop in his basement. I intend to use his tools to get an absolutely smooth cut on the top and bottom of the pipes as well as cut out the flanges. I would love to use PVC for the flanges, but sheet PVC is a bit expensive and hard to find, so I will probably use acrylic. Acrylic to PVC bonding is a bit dodgy, but I have had good luck doing it in the past.
This is one of the few times I am completely rebuilding something that I still remember what I did the last time.
Screwed Up
My original design was to gravity feed the ozone reactor which would gravity feed the skimmer which would gravity drain into the sump. The rational: by gravity feeding out of the tank I get all of the bad stuff straight into the filters. And I wanted to feed the ozone reactor first because the water feed from the tank is not all that stable and water fluctuations really mess with a skimmer, so, having it go through the ozone reactor first seemed like a good idea. Initially everything worked great - skimmer was producing perfectly. Then things started to go south. I could not figure out why the skimmer was producing less and less until it was producing nothing at all. After a week of no skimmer I figured it out: the ozone was not fully reacting in its reactor (or the bleach it produces was more than expected) and the rubber parts of the skimmer were dissolving!!!!!!! I found this out when I cleaned out a foam filter and found it saturated with soft bits of black stuff.
I shut off the ozone and did my best to clean the skimmer, and this morning, after another week of no skimmate, the skimmer finally kicked in again.
I need to get the ozone working as the butterfly fish I want to add really need the higher orp, so this morning I went to Lowes and bought another 10 foot section of 6 inch PVC and will make another set of ozone reactor/skimmer filters. Fortunately it only costs $34. I thought about reusing the old pipes, but there are too many holes in them and it would look kind of crappy to fill them in. I am also going to make a few modifications to the setup, so making a new set is not a total loss. A couple of the mods:
1. Sump return pump feed will be T-ed off and feed the skimmer as well as return water to the tank.
2. The filters will have flat bottoms instead of the slightly rounded PVC caps
3. Both pipes will be 5 feet tall - I had to make the other ones only 4 feet tall due to the gravity feed and height of the tank
4. No rubber parts - except for the uniseals which showed no ozone problems. This means I am going to have to fabricate some flanges for the top. Fortunately, the husband of one of my wife's friends has a full-up workshop in his basement. I intend to use his tools to get an absolutely smooth cut on the top and bottom of the pipes as well as cut out the flanges. I would love to use PVC for the flanges, but sheet PVC is a bit expensive and hard to find, so I will probably use acrylic. Acrylic to PVC bonding is a bit dodgy, but I have had good luck doing it in the past.
This is one of the few times I am completely rebuilding something that I still remember what I did the last time.
BeanAnimal
Premium Member
US Plastics has 10X10 .5" PVC sheets for around $15 each I think.
Your local TAP plastics likely has it also.
Your local TAP plastics likely has it also.
JC Pollman
Premium Member
I found this place which has 1/4" 12" x 12" for under $5 each - which makes it pretty close to acrylic prices:
http://sites.securemc.com/folder7924/index.cfm
http://sites.securemc.com/folder7924/index.cfm
