MOD seaclone skimmer

[ho bag]

So can anyone post a pic of the both tubes sut down and where they placed the rigid air line and air stone? I dont wanna go hack n slash with out knowing exactly what it is im doing first.

It seams to me that if i put and ait tube in there with a stoen it would hurt the flow and make it hard to make the little "seaclone" LOL

 

[fio1022]

How much of the collection cup tube should be cut for best results?
I want to replace the air valve.Does that brass valve have any negative effects or reactions the tank water?
How do you know when the air mixture is optimum?
Thanks.

 

[jman77]

This is a really old thread, but I just wanted to post what you can get out of these skimmers with a little modding .... The skimmer is pulling some nasty junk ...

 

[godiver908]

jman77 What mods did you do and what/how did you do to the maxi-jet setup ?

 

[phox202]

Ive done this, and let me tell you the results are incredible. I replaced the little deal that regulates the air flow with a T. One end of the T adjusts the air intake, the other side the air comes in (via a little foam "filter") and the other end feeds into the airline tube from the factory powerhead.

Cut down the inner tube in the collection cup by about an inch, and ran an airstone down to the bottom where basically an air bubble tornado is caused.

Here are a couple pics.

 

[Navymedic]

back from the dead!!!

I just got one of these with a used tank purchase and wondering if anyone still has theres, and if there ahs been any newer mods... I will try some of these mods tomorrow when I get home from work

 

[Engloid]

I saw in a thread awhile back, some dude put a neck from a 20oz. soda bottle inside the inner tube, extending into the collection neck. Very easy to do, and also made for a nice improvement.

I did basically the same thing to my Excaliber, but I just shaped it out of aluminum foil, since I didn't have anything that fit the inside diameter of the tube very well. It probably doubled the production of skimmate, to the point that I'm now looking at how to scale it back a little. The skimmate is a bit light for my liking.

 

[fishoutawater]

Try cutting off the off center input tube, reversing it and sticking it back on the other side in the center, you eliminate the "tornado", and the whole top of the skimmer is completely filled with bubbles. Patch the hole from the cutout with a little acrylic scrap and you are good to go.

 

[bigjay76]

Yesterday I did the airstone mod, and what a difference already! had half a cup of foul smelling med/dark skimmate. I cut a bioball last night and will install it today. I may eventually cut the center tube down, but I may wait to see, I mean already half a cup overnight.

 

[bigjay76]

I forgot to mention that pic was after cleaning.

 

[Engloid]

I took my seaclone off my tank. At a local frag swap, I won an ASM Mini-G in a raffle. It is so much easier to work with. They run about $120-155 in stores here, so they are pretty reasonably priced too.

The biggest problem I found with the seaclone is the shape of the chamber. I know they designed it to fit behind your tank and they didn't want you to have to put your tank a foot off the wall. that's why they made it a smaller diameter. The problem that poses is that you have very little swirling action to increase the time bubbles stay in the water....so they made it longer. Therefore, the problem is that the bubbles pretty much all go straight up.

I even put bioballs in to slow the travel down and maybe make some swirling. What this caused was that the little bubbles would often combine and I'd have some large bubbles coming up to the top also.

In the end, everything I tried wasn't doing any good. Even the wood "airstone" didn't do much good. I had more bubbles, but it didn't really result in much more skimmate.

 

[bigjay76]

I got it to work quite well, I just had to use two valves, one on the airstone line and one on the powerhead. I then adjusted them together, or tuned it if you will, and it is making some killer foam. Now by tuning them both at once, it is easier to find that sweet spot. The one on the stone line keeps the stone from putting too much bubbles and the other keeps the right amount of bubbles in the chamber. Its not that bad of a skimmer, you just have to fiddle with it a bit.

 

[njlpowell]

I remember doing these mods many years back on a knock-off SeaClone. It did outperform the Prism at least