Gone too far with Mesh Wheel MOD?

[SnowManSnow]

OK, so i did the mesh wheel mod on my octopus recirc 150. Problem is it produces TOO MANY BUBBLES and air and skims VERY wet, even with the gate valve all the way open.

Any ideas?

B

 

[Anonymous]

Congrats on the mod! I had the same problem, try putting a valve on your air to the venturi. Its a temporary fix, until skimate production goes down, then remove the valve. What is happening is the eff of the skimmer has gone way up. Until you get some more organics out of your system, it going to go nuts. I have found that skimmers are not linear, there is a point that it will calm down, just gotta get to it.

Be happy, it getting stuff out of your water that it didn't before.

Welcome to the club!

 

[SnowManSnow]

well im not happy cause its just overflowing. THe bubbles are so intense that its just bubbling white sudds at the top. The collection cup overflows my 2qt container in 3-4 hours. with clear salt water.

b

 

[Anonymous]

Calm down and restrict the airflow. You just increased the efficiency of your skimmer significantly. The needle wheel you had before must have been really bad. Another thing to check...did you put the volute back on correctly?

 

[Len]

Most skimmers are designed with a specific neck height to correspond to the volume of water and air the stock pump generates. You'll have to dial back the air to fix the problem, and I think the valve is the only way to do it. It's kind of counter-productive since the point of the mesh mod is to increase air. But even with a choked air input, you will probably still get much more air then compared to the stock needle wheel..

 

[SnowManSnow]

thanks for the replys : ) oh.. and this IS CALM for me.

I found that the tubing that goes with my RODI unit fits VERY snugly into the air intake tube of my skimmer. What I'll do is use that to increase the intake tube a bit then put a flow restrictor in line so I can dial up exactly what I want. They have them at buckeye.


B.

 

[Anonymous]

It is like puting a wait() function in a program after you upgrade the CPU so that you can see the animation correctly. :lol:

 

[trido]

So, after diving 25 pages back into all of your posts I found a pic of YOUR skimmer in action. If you can shorten the height of the riser tube where it T's off and enters the sump you can let it have all the air it wants. You would have to cut a hole in the side of the sump or raise the skimmer to achieve this though.

 

[SnowManSnow]

Can't raise it any cause its a VERY tight fit inside my stand... Gonna try the thing to restrict the air first. At any rate it is making a LOT more macro bubbles than it did before.. i mean a LOT more.. and the size of the bubbles are visibly much smaller too.

All in all... a great upgrade. I just wasn't expecting it to turbo charge it so much


b

 

[kgross]

It sounds like your gate valve has increased the height of the outlet tube, which is not allowing you to set the water level low enough. Try removing your gate valve and go back to stock and see if you can get it work better.


Kim