Help Gravity Fed Skimmer!

Fishcrazy06

New member
I am looking for some pictures or help or what not on doing a gravity fed skimmer that is on the order of a downdraft skimmer. Is it possible to have a skimmer run off of your drain line to the sump and not use a pump on the skimmer? My main tank will be on the main floor and sump and everything in the basement! Any and all help or pictures or drawings or anything will be very much appreciated!

Eric
 
For a down draft skimmer, you don't have enough safe pressure in your drain to run it. You might be able to get away with some type of a recirculating skimmer, but even that does not work great. The flow from the drain on the tank is not really consistant and you get some large bubbles that will effect the foam in the skimmer.

Kim
 
Do a needlewheel design. Euro Reef Clone etc. They are pretty easy to make and work very well.

Kim
 
Use gravity to feed the skimmer, but make it a recirc to get enough bubbles generated.

My skimmer is gravity fed from my 125G Dual megaflow tank one floor above. Initially I had a huge problem getting consistent skimming until I figured out: With Dual overflows.... they dont always output the SAME!!! When algae overgrew the overflow slots, one oveflow would shut almost completely off ( the one I was feeding my skimmer from ). I moved the feed to the other overflow and it runs much better.

IF you are using two overflows be VERY careful to level the tank from end to end or the overflows will be 'biased' and one will do most of the work while the other may slow to a trickle depending on how much return flow you have.

Stu
 
Going to be having a single drain! I installed a calfo overflow box in my tank! The drain size will be 1 1/4" coming out then as soon as its out of the bulkhead I will be upsizing it to 1 1/2". Thanks for all the input and ideas I love em! Keep em coming! Think I may take a bunch of ideas and combine them in and get the best I can for what I want!

Eric
 
i saw what, i thought, looked like a nice down draft / drain skimmer on here..

had a T just above the skimmer feed to allow an alternate path for water to get out of the main tank... so not all the drain water was skimmed...

i dont recall if it was recirc or not...

if you down size the skimmer feed , shouldnt that increase the water speed to the skimmer, and give a better venturi.

the T off the main drain line might have had a valve for skimmer control, i dont really recall..
 
You can see the feed from the tank above is the vertical tube. I can route all the water either thru the skimmer or thru the frag tank if I want.

If I close the ball valve then all the water goes to the right to my frag tank. I can close the valve & completely remove the simmer if I want.

607725gal_bucket_skimmer_1_small.JPG



Stu
 
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