Help testing a large diy beckett skimmer

[naterealbig]

Hey everyone,

I just completed a large diy beckett skimmer. You can check out the thread here if you like. I built it for my 180 tank that I haven't set up yet. I didn't fit a pump into the budget for the build, as I don't need one yet, but I would like to run the skimmer on a medium to large system just to see how it performs. Any help or ideas would be great. Anyone want to try this beast on their tank?

Thanks,

Nate

 

[PelagicMagic]

sure I would

 

[PelagicMagic]

thats a very nice skimmer, you did a very nice job building it

 

[naterealbig]

Thanks PM! It took a lot of planning - and even so, there are some things I will do different the next time I build one. Sent you a PM.

 

[ChristianJock07]

I saw this skimmer in action tonight. It's a workhorse and only about 1 foot taller than NatBig.

That was a good job on the building and I agree with you, Sketchup is an awesome program to use.


Chris

 

[Lageo04]

Saw this thing in action today. For someone who says he never worked with acrylic before sure turned out one awesome piece of equipment.

 

[Ikaria]

I saw it today too. Pretty cool!

 

[naterealbig]

Thanks so much everyone for your words of encouragement! It took quite a bit of planning and time, but I think it is going to be awesome. We tried out the skimmer on a 3600gph dart pump, but it didn't seem to push it hard enough. Even with only one beckett running it still wasn't pushing out much foam. To be honest, I don't think the pump was running well, and Rob said that 1: the pump was flow biased, and 2: he's returning it due to a leaky seal. The only other pump he had was a 1.5 hp pump which did the trick, but was simply way to big. He had to keep the MH's turned off on his large clam/coral tank due to the breaker tripping on over current. We disconnected the huge 'pool pump' and put a dolphin 2000gph pump on it now. With this pump however, we can only run one tower. Right now I'm looking at a sequence 'marlin' which should be just perfect. We'll see, and I'll keep everyone posted. The pics below are of the skimmer after about 15 minutes of skimming, with the large pump.

 

[PelagicMagic]

wow that is a big sucker. Nice job on the skimmer

 

[naterealbig]

Thanks boss