Increasing Skimmer Efficiency

[Catastrofe]

I have an ER CS8-1 and I'd like to improve its efficiency if possible. My sump is an open 40 gal breeder (no dividers), so I'm re-skimming some of the same water over and over.

Short of a complete re-design or overhaul, is there anything I can do to improve efficiency? For instance, is it possible to plumb the output of the skimmer so that it exits near the intake of my MAG12 return pump? Would adding a gate valve on the skimmer output help by itself? Is there a more efficient skimmer design (yeah, that's the ticket. . .I need a BK! )?

Suggestions/ideas?

[Heinz]

you can add a baffel in your sump and a gate valve on your skimmer, and let the return go over the baffel so that your skimmer wont reskim

[Catastrofe]

Thanks. . .that's one of the options already on my list. Adding a baffle seems like such a hassle though. . .of course I'm looking for the lazy man's solution!! :devil2:

[moonpod]

increase the size of your pump on the ER.

[Miguelito]

increase the size of your pump on the ER.

Yeah - get the skimmer diameter and height - then compare it to a Deltec or an H&S. See what pump they use, then retrofit a similar pump. WAG I'd say its a 38W Aquabee. Here are some Aquabee needlewheel pumps for resale.

http://www.finsreef.com/home.php?cat=284

I wouldn't worry about reskimming the same water, if you have decent turnover to your sump you're fine.

[Catastrofe]

Replacing the pump seems like a practical solution, however none of ER's competitors have an 8" X 20" unit. It looks like H&S uses the Eheim 1260 on their 8" X 23.5" model (200-1260).

Think that would work out? Of course, at $300 for the Eheim I might need to reconsider. . .

[ricka]

Turn it into a recirculating skimmer.

--Rick

[ldrhawke]

Turn it into a recirculating skimmer.

--Rick

That's what I did to this ER 5-2. Increased its size and repiped to make it and outside recirculation skimmer. My Bubble Prince......

[Aged Salt]

Hi Hawke, good job:. Can you in more detail, post exactly the before & after, thnx. Bob

[ldrhawke]

Hi Hawke, good job:. Can you in more detail, post exactly the before & after, thnx. Bob

Bob,

I just added a section that shows the construction on my Web Site. Click on "Hawke's Web Site" below and go to Skimmer Construction.

Strictly by accident I think I stumbled on to a modification that improves performance.

When I connected the old upper and new lower section, the passage between the two is restricted to a dounut orifice by the coupling and extension tube that goes down to the bottom of the skimmer. You can see when it is operation that the bubbles that move into the upper section do not easily return to the lower section. It appears this is improving on concentrating the waste in the cup and keeping bubbles with waste attached from returning to the tank.

It acts as a two stage skimmer, or a much taller skimmer, with the upper section now becoming a stilling area for the waste to collect in and concentrates it, as the picture below shows. It removes a 1/2 gal of bad looking stuff from the tank every week.

It definitely reduces the amount of waste that can be returned to the over flow from turbulent agitation in the lower section and puts it where it belongs

[Aged Salt]

Hawk, interesting web-site, from which I have a couple of questions:

1) Is the exit tube at the riser tube connection adjustable?

2)The air-bubbler concept is intriguing. Do you measure ORP? If so does it change during the "on" cycle? Have you experimented with the times "on" & "off" & frequency intervals?. TIA, Bob

[ldrhawke]

Hawk, interesting web-site, from which I have a couple of questions:

1) Is the exit tube at the riser tube connection adjustable?

2)The air-bubbler concept is intriguing. Do you measure ORP? If so does it change during the "on" cycle? Have you experimented with the times "on" & "off" & frequency intervals?. TIA, Bob

1) Yes! it is the very nice oring over flow tube supplied with the ER sump mounted skimmer. It is simply installed into an over flow T so it can be mounted out side the sump. The tube is a friction fit with the orings and I simply slide it up or down.

2) I don't measure ORP. With the skimmer running 24 -7, I am sure it saturates the tank with oxygen from all the fine bubble mixing and diffusion it causes.

I have it set up now to cycle every 3 hours, only during daylight hours. 15 minutes on, with two 1 minute cycles of fine air bubbles during the 15 minutes. I recenly changed the cycle periods to daylight only, feeling all the heavy water movement in a dark tank could cause a fish to run into my anemone and get stung or eaten in the dark. I look at the process as low tide and wave action on a reef.

Although it probably does do a good job of staturating the water with O2, that is not the purpose. The idea is to act some what like a whole tank skimmer and pick up waste particles so they go over the over flow and into my filter bag floss. It also does a good job of feeding the whole tank with bacteria and food particles. The floss get full of dirt very quickly. In fact it was taking out too much and the softies were being stunted. I now change out the floss twice a week instead of every day. This allows some of the particles to over flow the bag filter and recycle back into the tank when the floss get full of waste. It was making everything too clean otherwise. It does a good job of cleaning the bottom. I never have to syphon.

[Aged Salt]

Excellent post, Hawk, & one can definitely see the value of the air-bubbler for detritus removal & feeding. Have you tried removing the overflow socks-floss to allow better coral feedings? Thnx. Bob

[ldrhawke]

Excellent post, Hawk, & one can definitely see the value of the air-bubbler for detritus removal & feeding. Have you tried removing the overflow socks-floss to allow better coral feedings? Thnx. Bob

I have removed the socks to test it without them. The tank started to have too many floating particles in the water column after a couple of days and looked dirty.

As a spin off ot the Zeo process I use the bags in my own configuration for the same pupose. I use two bags. In the bottom of one I put a cup of carbon. In the bottom of the other a 1/2 cup of Zeolite rock. All the tank over flow goes through the bags. In the top of the bag I put a hand full of floss.

Once a day I add a 1/2 cap full of vodka as a clean carbon source into the top of the bag filters. The bags become full of bacteria slime with in a few hours. My own version of the Zeolite process. I do feed ZeoFood to enrich the bacteria, but all the waste being collected in the floss is probably doing that anyway.

I do not feel it is necessary to continuely add bacteria. It will develop based on the enviroment better than we can do in attempt to control it. Not that seeding isn't a bad idea to start. This totally additional topic.

This article should give everyone food for thought about the diversity of bacteria and it's natural tenency to develop on it own, based on the world it sees and available food. It is also an indication as to how little we really know about the micorbe world that supports all life:

A recent study and finding........the same finding would apply to a reef tank bacteria

"The soil beneath our feet may be teeming with a hundred times more species of bacteria than previously thought, according to biologists in New Mexico, US. Their calculations reveal that one gram of dirt can harbour a million microbial species – and that metal pollution kills 99% of these as-yet unknown germs.

Measuring the bacterial biodiversity of soil is difficult because only a few species can be cultured in the lab, according to Jason Gans of Los Alamos National Laboratory, California, US. Fortunately, biologists can also estimate biodiversity using a technique called DNA reassociation. This involves chemically unzipping the two strands of all the bacterial DNA in a sample, mixing them up and seeing how long they take to join up again with matching partners.

If all the DNA strands were the same, they would find matching partners very quickly. But the more diverse the DNA strands, the longer this match-making takes, allowing researchers to estimate how many different species there are in the sample.

When this technique was applied to soils in the late 1990s, it suggested that a gram of dirt contained about 16,000 species. But this estimate assumed that the populations of all the different species in the soil were roughly equal in size. So Gans and his colleagues have developed new equations to reanalyse the same DNA reassociation data but without this size assumption.

Their results reveal that there are a few very common species in soil but lots of rare species. "There is a very large number of low abundance species," says Gans. So many rare species, in fact, that the estimate of bacterial biodiversity rises to one million species per gram of soil.

Sewage sludge

These rare species appear to be absent in soil contaminated with heavy metals, however. The team also reanalysed the DNA reassociation pattern of soil experimentally polluted with metal-rich sewage sludge. Gans suggests that the contamination may have killed 99% of the bacterial species.

But the consequences of losing so much bacterial biodiversity in polluted plots of land are unknown. "Now that we have a way to measure it, the next thing is to correlate species diversity with how well plants grow," he says.

As the new calculations reveal far more bacterial species in soil than anyone realised, the next challenge is to identify those species and the roles that they play in ecosystems.

"They might have some key functions that are known, or even unknown," says Ruth-Anne Sandaa of the University of Bergen in Norway, who measured the original DNA reassociation patterns used in Gans’ analysis.
Journal reference: Science (vol 309 p 1387)
"

[Aged Salt]

Interesting post & concept, Hawke, so do you instead dose a pinch of soil or sewage sludge in place of ZeoBak? Do you use any zeo-supplements to help define color in the corals? Thnx. Bob