i have won the battle of the microbubbles!
it feels like i've been banging my head against a rock forever trying to figure this out, but i've finally done it. i can't post a pic til later but i'll try to explain how i did it. mrc makes a nearly perfect product, but the little mods and whatnot you guys have figured out that really complete them.
fyi- i have my skimmer plumbed internally in the sump, and all plumbing mentioned in the following is 1.5"
off my gate valve, i have a 1)tee- out of which one outlet is capped(top) and the other outlet is a 2)90 degree elbow (bottom) pointed away from my return inlet. from there i extended the pipe out a couple inches to a 3)threaded male adapter. then i screwed that into the front of a 4)1.5" socket/thread bulkhead i got from
www.customaquatic.com (short body/long body makes no difference). then i took a 5)4" bracketed filter sock i got from
www.marinedepot.com and cut out the little plastic tab inside of the bracket with scissors and left a 2cm nub on each side. then i took the two pieces of the bulkhead and screwed them into each other, held in place by the 2 plastic nubs inside the sock.
the bulkhead when screwed on in this manner creates a nearly air-tight seal which traps all the microbubbles in the filter sock and say goodbye to microbubbles. buh-bye i did the same thing to my overflow drains. that combined w/ stockman standpipes in the overflow my tank is silent and finally bubble-free.
oh, and believe it or not, by adding the bulkhead, my drains are each handling 1500 gph going into these little 4" 100 micron bags without a sound, splash or the bag overflowing with water.
