$10 DIY skimmer

[Anonymous]

"frellin amazing"

LOL...

Lord,
It's funny, I always thought of "SPS CORALS" as this impossible to keep group, until I decided to throw a $5 frag in my LPS tank. You'd be surprised how hardy some of them are, especially Montipora digitata. I think Pocillopora damicornis is fairly hardy as well.

 

[UnderGrad]

That digitata is actually really hard to kill...
Matt, that piece that you gave me was still kickin until a few days ago. It had fallen from the ledge I stuck it onto and I couldn't get to it. So it laid on its side in a spot where it only got indirect lighting (and not much at that) and hung in there for ~3 months. When I took down my nano and moved it into a spot with some direct MH lighting... it took off! But sadly after about 1.5 months of growing like crazy, it developed some sort of rapid polyp necrosis that I couldn't stop. Oh well.

Arlan

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry to hear that. I forget, did I give you the purple morph? Did it color up again under the MH?

FWIW, I still have a tiny bit more if you want to try it again. I gave about 90% of my colony to Shawn Hanser to make room in the 6, but I kept enough to start a new colony. I also have some more of the green too.

 

[Anonymous]

Marked for archiving

 

[ohthelies]

This skimmer looks fabulous for my JBJ nanocube, but I have a few newbie questions.

Other than the air pump, is there any pump used to push water through this thing? Where does the airline enter the skimmer from? The holes in the top? The hole in the bottom? Is there a slight waterfall sound to it? Would raising the holes from the coupling to the 2" pvc help silence it if there were a waterfall sound?

Thanks a bunch,
Nick.

ps: has anybody used this with the JBJ nanocube? If so, does it fit well, and what other mods did you do to the cube itself? What did you end up with for a final height? Pics?

 

[Anonymous]

talk to Hwarang on the "other" mods..he's done some unique mods to the lighting in his JBJ...

 

[Anonymous]

Now I'm just showing off.

 

[Anonymous]

Good Stuff mmmm

 

[Baianotang]

ok cool

 

[Anonymous]

So, did this skimmer work really well?

How often did you have to change the airstone? if there was one, I think there was....

 

[Anonymous]

Just an update on this baby...

I got a PM regarding this and I'll attempt to try and answer all the questions here.

The top of the collection cup has several holes drilled in it. These holes are necessary to vent all the air from the skimmer. As you can see, the nasty skimmate foam goes through these holes. This was not intended, and can be avoided. I will make a post below about how to fix this.

There is no need for any other pump besides an air pump to run this. The airstone sits at the bottom of the skimmer. You can run airline to the skimmer however you want--outside the skimmer, inside the skimmer, etc. I found it much simpler to go outside the skimmer, but if you want the airline to come through a hole in the collection cup you can do that too.

Any air pump should work. It won't require a whole lot of power to run it.

 

[Anonymous]

So here are some pics of a professionally made collection cup. Note that, on the cap, there is a very short section of acrylic tubing slightly larger than the riser tube. Then the vent holes are drilled outside of this tube. What this does is prevent the foam from getting pushed out the vent holes. Mimic this and you won't have that problem.

A completely aesthetic point. Placing the vent holes elsewhere will not affect the performance of the skimmer, it just looks gross when nasty skimmate is coming out of them.

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Matt

Think you can post a pic of the whole thing? Or some more of the top of it? It looks like some sort of union there in the last pics which is not used at all on the first page of this thread...

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Matt

Think you can post a pic of the whole thing? Or some more of the top of it? It looks like some sort of union there in the last pics which is not used at all on the first page of this thread...

Bryan,
These most recent pics are of a Euroreef, not my skimmer. I'm simply showing how to design a collection cup lid so that foam won't comeout of the vent holes.

 

[cjsrch]

Oh yeah, re the Ca reactor...

Good idea, but I'd be scared to get it tuned on an established nano tank. It would be really simple to make though, and I have an extra dosing pump unit laying around too.....*gears spinning*

i build a ca reactor with internal 2nd chamber. never used it (yet)
i was planning on selling them but decided not to. so i guess i can post picts and such on here and build anotherone step by step ( after i make sure the first one works lol)
im gonna be gone next week tho


anyways that is a cool lookin lil skimmer add a PH to it and it would probobly work great

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Matt

Think you can post a pic of the whole thing? Or some more of the top of it? It looks like some sort of union there in the last pics which is not used at all on the first page of this thread...

Bryan,
These most recent pics are of a Euroreef, not my skimmer. I'm simply showing how to design a collection cup lid so that foam won't comeout of the vent holes.

Gotcha...