Dart Needle Wheel on 55 Gallon Drum Skimmer

[KADLETZ]

What size pump are you feeding the skimmer with?

Love the work still man, I have been looking at this thread for over an hour! love it!!!

 

[Tigger240]

And I quote again

Dart Needle Wheel on 55 Gallon Drum Skimmer

Its a sequence dart. He has an older one with the better motor - it has cooling fins the full length. Spazz said something like the new motors have like 140 deg F versus 110 deg F on the older motors. There easy to tell apart - ones grey and ones black.

 

[spuzio]

The skimmer is being directly fed from my overflow of my tank. So i calculated it at about 600 gph going through it.

Domes can be purchased from... http://www.globalplastics.ca/default.asp?mn=1.179

 

[jnarowe]

that skimmer is beautiful! How is it working now?

 

[RandyStacyE]

Looks like you did a great job on that cone. Those cones could be considered ‘relatively expensive’ for such a big skimmer. I’m a cheapskate, I’d make a cone. Then again you’ve been there done that.

I was thinking if you took the original lid to the drum (or a compatible lid) you could cut out 90% of lid just leaving a lip to secure the dome/cone to it using nylon bolts etc…

That way you would have a removable top. It’s hard to tell from the pics if you utilized the lid or not. Just an idea.

 

[spuzio]

Yup. I used the lid, however, with the cone that i created i do not have a flange on it. I was to cheap to get a piece of acrylic that size to to make the flange for it. That may become an upgrade option later one.

 

[RandyStacyE]

Oh ... I figured that if you made your cone using a piece of plywood with a hole cut out then you would have a flat lip all the way around. Maybe you did and just cut it all off ... anyway such a lip could be like a built in flange if you trim it off all the way around.

Just an idea ... I've never made a cone before, but I've seen many pics of them being made. I'm sure it's not as easy as it looks

 

[spuzio]

The major problem that i had when building the cone is that a 24" round piece of acrylic is not that easy to fit into any oven.

 

[jnarowe]

I had to angle my cone piece in the oven and the door still wouldn't close. Didn't matter as there was enough heat to do the job.

 

[Black71gp]

any more news on this .. exactly what i wanna do for my tank and skimmer.... since i have an extra 55 gallon drum laying around

 

[spuzio]

the skimmer has been running great. The only modification that i did was add a Dwyer Air Flow meter to the air input side. This allows me to tweak the amount of air entering the system pretty granularly. The skimmate output has become very consistant and i am very happy with the result finally.

 

[Herpervet]

Edit: I went back and looked at the initial pic's.

For a dummie please give some explanation as to which tubes are input and which are ouput (i.e. aquarium water.)

Is there a reason not to put the aquarium water into the skimmer near the top to make this counter current?

Do you have any issues with microbubbles exiting the skimmer? i.e. How far below the dart input is the gate valve and did that placement work ok to prevent microbubbles escaping into your sump/tank?

I would think this is a very large skimmer for a 225 tank. I hope so because I would like to make one for my 500.

 

[H20ENG]

GP,
A buddy of mine made a kreisel tank (U-shape) over a huge BBQ in Africa (not too many shops around where he was). You just have to really keep an eye on the heat. I think he layed the piece out on some metal mesh and played with how high above the pit it was to control the heat.

If you really need to use your oven, You could also cut your pieces in half, heat them, mold to a half cone, then solvent them together. Not pretty but functional.

 

[spuzio]

The reason that people put the water at the bottom is to prevent turbulance at the top of the skimmer. As for inputs, i used 1.5" for the input and output. I will try to take some detailed pictures later today and post them up.