beckett skimmer performance

titoreefs

New member
Its been a while since I seen anyone messing around with the old becketts.I have one and notice this type of skimmers usually have a lot of turbulance in the reaction chamber.So went on and did an extention to the reaction chamber and a difuser plate 1/2 way up finished up late at night so ill have to test it tomorow.But I was wandering if someone else out there has tryed difuser plates on becketts before and what were the results.
 
No, but I have been thinking about reducing the turbulence in my beckett skimmer as well. I

I haven't tried diffuser plates, I was going to try directing the inflow in a more diffuse pattern first, I have a couple other ideas to keep the turbulence from effecting the foam head. Turbulence is only really a bad thing because of this.
 
I'm curious if anyone has done a study on the ratio of airflow to water flow for various types of skimmer technologies. It may be that becketts have a low ratio which might explain more turbulence (more water flow per air). It might be the other way too.
 
These are the pictures of the before and after.
PICT0054.jpg

PICT0057.jpg

PICT0056.jpg

this is the extention with the difuser plate,
PICT0055.jpg

PICT0057.jpg

and here it is testing it.
PICT0058.jpg

Right now im just breaking it in because of the new acrylic parts
but with the plate the turbulance was cut down by almost 50%.
Before this mod I was getting really big bubble bursts in the riser
tube that was collapsing the foam and was not allowing it to collect nice foam only REALLY wet foam wich I was not to happy about.I Just started to fine toon it tonigh so gess Ill have wait till tomorrow to see how it goes.
 
Keelay
Can you share your ideas on trying to cut down turbulance?
May help a lot of us.Who knows you might have seen something
that all of us have overlooked.
 
hernluis how do you cut perfect circles out of the acrylic?
I use templates and a router.
kroe I am not a big beckett fan due to their inefficiency, but good idea and nice work .
Thanks for the complement.I dont think that the becketts are totally ineficient I think all these technologies have brough us closer to where we are today cause when they first appared they were the best thing that ever happened to reef keeping.I think we just need to play with it a little more and who knows were that can leed us.But just in case I have laying around a 10"wide x 6 feet long acrylic tube and I have some wicket ideas for a recirc needle weell with self cleaning head but thats an other story.
 
Awhile ago there was a post about beckett inj. Basically it said, seal the four big holes that allow air in and drill some little holes. Many said it helped. I drilled six holes of the smallest bit I had. I haven't tested yet been too busy doing other DIY. The becketts need alot of watts to run right. So, have started a mesh mod on a quietone 4000. When the mesh gets here I'll start testing.
 
Yea I followed that thread but they never went beyond the injector part.Did anybody ever tested them with the mod next to a needle or pinweel skimmer?Very interested to know the results if any.
 
From my little testing becketts can suck more air than pinwheels but the bubbles are bigger and turbalance is a problem. If you could fine a small pump with mesh that can handle alot of air. You could put it inline with a beckett to chop up the bubbles.
 
One could probably use a becket to feed a skimmer and a meshed pump to recirc.That could probably bring the Becket/pinweel wars to a happy medium.
Dont you think?
Just have to find the brave one to do it.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9854282#post9854282 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by billyzbear
From my little testing becketts can suck more air than pinwheels but the bubbles are bigger and turbalance is a problem. If you could fine a small pump with mesh that can handle alot of air. You could put it inline with a beckett to chop up the bubbles.

What were your testing parameters? Same pump? Same skimmer?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9855846#post9855846 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by titoreefs
One could probably use a becket to feed a skimmer and a meshed pump to recirc.That could probably bring the Becket/pinweel wars to a happy medium.
Dont you think?
Just have to find the brave one to do it.

Are you suggesting running two different air injection methods on the same skimmer? Using Two pumps? Just trying to clarify.
 
Are you suggesting running two different air injection methods on the same skimmer? Using Two pumps? Just trying to clarify.
Im just leting my mind go wild but yea wy not who knows we can probably reinvent the weel here.One injection system will inject a massive amount of bubbles and the other choppes them down.
:cool:
Coming back to reality I have an EtS clone on one of my invert systems and I swaped the beckett skimmer from where I had it to that system using a smaller pump and guess what? the skimmer works far better than with the other pump Wich is an Iwaky 40 pressure rated.The skimate it produces is dry and dark witch is strage considering were talking about a beckett.Now check this out the ETS clone is now been run by the iwaky pump and it really sucks:confused:
Im guessing theres something wrong with the pump cause I was having a lot of trouble fine tunning the beckett and now Im having the same problem with clone.
The water level is never constant regardless of what I do and Im ussing a gate valve and the foam is really wet and ive run this skimmer on an identical pump before but in that case the thing ran great.So I think theres something wrong with the pump.
What you people think?
 
I use to have a beckett skimmer that I made. I first tried with a mag12 performance was so so. I then put a genx40 then a genx55. Wow this thing would suck some serious air. With the genx55 with two inj I could pull over 20 LPM each. The skimmer was so hard to control it wouldn't work right. If I adj air valve down to 10 it was ok but bubble size was still a problem. Skimmer was 10" around by 36" tall. The pump was too loud, it's in the tv room so I got a sedra 9000. The 9000 pulls 9-12 LPM it's not modded. It works pretty good. The skimmer is too tall to fit my future plans and I have started a prop systen in the garage. So I built another skimmer. This time I'm useing a defuser, 10" around and it's 30" tall. A friend had a muzzi inj so I put that on with the mag12. I get 15-20 LPM, bubble size is pretty good. Soon here I'll get the mesh and mod 9000 and a quietone 4000. After that I'll try the becckets again and maybe I'll try to add the two. Inj a modded quietone 4000, I think the 4000 won't spin with all the air. It won't cost me anything.
Titoreefs, beckets can be a pain to adj. Try to adj air valve, it sounds like it's open too much.It helps to have the water line fixed where the skimmer is. Adj the water line in skimmer to where just a little bit of bubbles exit.Then adj air, only a little at first and wait 12 hours. Adj as needed. If the skimmer goes flat there isn't much to skim.You mite want to clean inj and pump. I adj mine about 6" from top. I hope this helps ya.
 
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