Altered Skimmer

[CichlidMan@<3]

Recently acquired an SCA-301 Skimmer off of here to throw on my 35 rimless. Man what a poor design of a skimmer. The exhaust on this thing just made no sense thus it had a serious microbubble issue. I decided to take matters into my own hands and try my luck at using things I've picked up from John and altering this thing. Here is a picture of before:


First problem was that all of the pvc was foreign. A slight increase to 3/4" pvc was my choice of change. Skimmer body had to be carefully dremeled to fit the bigger pvc. Once I made the hole bigger, I dremeled the piece of pvc that enters the body at an angle so that water only enters at the bottom of the pvc in the body to exit the skimmer. Instead of having an idiotic T just dumping back in the sump I went with an elbow and then a T that I dremeled as well with the interior thinner to allow easy adjustments with the riser pipe on top. After all of this and a few cold ones I ended up with this product:


Microbubbles have dwindled almost to nothing. Came out nice if you ask me. Thanks to Dantdodge for giving me a hand.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Stupid knock off bubble magus knock off. Why not go with a gate valve?

 

[CichlidMan@<3]

Stupid knock off bubble magus knock off. Why not go with a gate valve?

Had an itch to do this today, didn't feel like waiting on a gate valve to arrive. I'm able to dial it in enough with what I did with the top riser

 

[CrazyEyes]

Yeah true, wedge pipes are good enough. Still a better design than it was.

 

[rfalvey89]

Looks good. like the blue PVC but have heard that the "metric" system is hard to retro fit.
....as a cursory note:
can appreciate the " Eric Church" koozie wrapped on some Silver B-eee's

 

[Webmanny]

Chris,

That didn't take long to hack. I can't wait to see how it performs. I was never truly happy with its performance. I hope this mod makes it better.

Please share some pics or videos of this thing in action once you set it up.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Any plans to upgrade the pump?

 

[CichlidMan@<3]

Haha falvey yup saw him last night.
No plans to upgrade pump. This is basically a temporary skimmer until I can get one of those new nyos skimmers

 

[rogergolf66]

Stupid knock off bubble magus knock off. Why not go with a gate valve?

+1 was the first thing I did with my itech was to add a gate valve. I won't run a skimmer with out one. Other then that nice job.

That skimmer just shows u can make anything and say its good and people will buy it that don't know any better. What an awful way to drain the skimmer before.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Those nyos skimmers are amazing.