Agree no need for two protein skimmers. Also no need to plumb protein skimmer output into the return pump input. Just back into the sump somewhere rear the return pump will be more than adequate.
Another alternative is to run the return pump output through an external skimmer and have the skimmer discharge directly into the tank. This does require the outlet of the skimmer to be higher than the tank though and will not look pretty unless you have your equipment in an another room. I used this method for many years when I used an Aquamedic 5000 skimmer that was very tall.
Steve
In a chain of articles communicating that skimmers are essential and high value pieces of filtration equipment, to.... bio pellet reactors are great carbon source nitrate reducers, to... in order for bio pellet reactors to be effective they should feed into/through a protein skimmer... I came to this design.
The quandary I have from this (and other) feedback is not to have 2 skimmers. However in a lot of blogs/articles they state that the most effective way to use a bio pellet reactor to reduce nitrates and not have a jump in phosphates is to feed the output directly into a skimmer. (one such article from the Marine Depot blog
http://blog.marinedepot.com/2014/05/biopellets-beginners-guide.html) But since I have such a large tank, and even with the good sized reactor I'd use, the limiting factor in this is that the reactor has a pretty low flow rate. So the appropriate skimmer would be severely undersized for my tank. Hence the +1 sized skimmer in the front of the system, and the second, just for the bio pellet reactor output at the end.
So, I guess my main question is what is wrong with 2 skimmers? If it is just a matter of potentially unnecessary equipment then that's one thing... but if the second skimmer could negatively impact the filtration in some way, that would be another and I'd like to know if that is the case.
To me the highest priority is high quality stable marine environment. But I would like to balance that with the fewest points of failure and ease of maintenance as I can. I guess at the end of the day I'll live with a little higher maintenance and up-front cost for the quality of the habitat.
And on a side note... the reason I was putting the return from the second skimmer into a 'T' on the return pump is because I am drawing the feed water to the reactor/skimmer from the same place/section I'm returning it. The 'T' seemed like a good way to limit any recirculation of returned water back into the feed causing a loop of sorts.
