Upgraded skimmer cup

[ReefsandGeeks]

I got tired of emptying my skimmer cup every other day, so I decided to upgrade I 3D printed a new cup that's able to hold about 8 times as much skimmate. Just put it on my skimmer last night. I'd like to upgrade to a new large skimmer, but reef funds are short and large skimmers are expensive. I think this will work for now, and I'll likely move this to a frag tank after I eventually get a bigger skimmer. Enjoy

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

Pics

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[ryeguyy84]

That's pretty awesome.

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[Vinny Kreyling]

That neck extension will change the way you set it up.

 

[Anemone]

I'd be concerned about whether you are still going to get good skimmate with the additional height you added to the length the skimmate must "climb" before overflowing into the cup.

Oh, and although the whole 3D printing thing is cool, your original skimmer cup already comes with an overflow elbow that you can connect to vinyl tubing so it dumps into whatever size container you want.

Kevin

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

I do have the skimmer set so the water level is higher to compensate for the extra height. Seems to be working well so far. Seems the extra height might even be making the skimmer work a bit better, but I'm probably just looking for it to perform better. This is something I've imagined doing for a long time, so I'm sure that has something to do with it as well.

I know I could have used the vinyl hose on the old cup to fill a secondary container, but I've always been afraid of that since the other container could overflow if the skimmer went nuts and spill in my cabinet area. This could be fixed by keeping the container in the sump area so if it did overflow it would overflow into the sump, but I am limited on sump space, and haven't been able to make that work. That would have been easier though.

I figured, if the extra height makes the skimmer not perform as well, I can always cut the cup size down to better match the height of the old cup.