Our 300g + 2x 80g build

[fishdaddy]

  it still makes me lol to see you get out of there, there no way that i would get out  or even in there this is what makes this hobby so much fun... fun times

[dan2x38]

WOW congrats Pat that is just sick! An amazing set-up... the flow looks like an ocean pool.

You were built for that plumbing job... hey what do expect from friends anyways... of course a good laugh at your expense is always a topper! LOL 

[redbelly]

Well it is about time I updated this thread. The main tank is up and running and in perfect thread but as I just started the skimmer that I built yesterday I figured now would be a good time to post the pics to show how i built it

I started with a real POS skimmer that I picked up from a fellow reefer. Based on the water level that was drawn on the skimmer I dont think he ever really got it to work properly and one quick look at the design and its not hard to figure out why. The skimmer goes from 6" to 4" to 1.5" all with sharp 90 degree angels that just distroy bubble production. The beckett injector could also not be removed for cleaning and becketts should be removed and cleaned once a week to ensure proper operation. That being said it was a good deal for the skimmer and the tubes were well work it. So i did the only thing i could, got out the saw and hacked the skimmer into pieces!

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[redbelly]

Now with the tubes cut it came time to start building the box for the new skimmer. For this skimmer we wanted to move away from a beckett injector skimmer due to the mainenance that they require and due to the fact that they require a very large power hungry pump to feed each injector used. So we decided to build a recirculation style skimmer that uses 2 Octopus 3000 pumps with venturi's feeding needle wheels. We also wanted the space that it could be expanded and add a second tower to the skimmer should the need ever arrise. Our plans for the second tower would be to run a single needle wheel pump but to run the modified laguna or red dragon pump used on the bubble king skimmers. Unfortunately we did not take a pic of the extra large box that before we started adding too it but you can see it in later pics.

After a great many hours designing, drawing, redrawing and drinking lots of coffee a design was finally settled upon. The pumps would be mounted on the side of the box and draw water from the bottom of the skimmer below a deviding plate. The water would then be injected with air and be pumped above the deviding plate and into a 6" tube ontop of which was a bubble difuser plate to reduce turbulance. As the water would be exiting the skimmer from below the devider plate ans as water was being taken from below the plate and injected above the plate some holes obviously had to be made in the plate.

The first step here was to build the devider plate. So the chop saw was used to cut all the acrylic down to size and the drill press came in very handy for drilling a series of large holes for the water to return from the top side of the plate to the lower side of the plate.



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[redbelly]

Now it came time to design the output of the pumps into the bubble diffuser column. One train of thought was to just have the water enter going straight up but this might create a blast is current pointing directly at the bubble plate. The second school of thought was to have water enter the column in just a 90 degree elbow but a T was decided on as it would breakup the flow into 2 outputs aka more diffused flow. Plus we thought that the opposing flows would balance eachother out and reduce turbulence, which they did

Here is a pic of a single T that was modified slightly on the grinder. By making the output of the T on about a 45 degree angle it created agreater space between the T and the cylinder wall that it would soon be going in. Plus being at 45 degrees means a larger opening = more diffused output = reduced turbulence.

The next pix here shows the 2 T's that would soon be the outputs to the 2 octopus pumps in the diffuser column.

And the final pic shows a top view of the layout of the divider plate. You can see another hole marked in the top left of the plate which will be drilled for the output water of the skimmer. The output water of the skimmer is taken from the very bottom to decrease the number of micro bubble coming out of the skimmer.

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[redbelly]

With the protective plastic removed from the devider plate, here is a pic of the output T's inside the diffuser column.

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[redbelly]

Now came the fun part. The bubble diffuser plate for the top of the column. This piece took a fair amount of time to layout and a lot of drilling to get it just right. The plate was then attached to the tube and the excess material from the plate was removed with a router.

In the last pic here you can see a top view of the bubble diffuser plate and below you can see the modified output T's where the water will be injected into this column.

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