New Skimmer – Price is no Object!

[BeanAnimal]

No, I run carbon


And actually, my 7' tall skimmer does a pretty good job at keeping the yellow out. I do a 30G water change once a month or less. I have 150G total and don't remember to change the carbon but once every 8 weeks or so. I only run a cup or two. I am amazed at how clear the change water really is. Before the big skimmer, it looked like green tea in the bucket.

I should also add that I overfeed SEVERELY every day and that my tank is very overstocked with coral... wall to wall with palythoa and other softies that are doing chemical warfare that you can almost see! I have a LOT of caulerpa in the display as well, the foxface is starting to thin it out.

[pjf]

Then come back when your skimmer doesn't need carbon.

Originally posted by BeanAnimal
This has been fun guys... but honestly, I have better things to do (like empty the skimmer cup).

When you get it figured out and start selling tests and a skimmer that performs better than the other stuff out there.. let me know.

[BeanAnimal]

Originally posted by pjf
Then come back when your skimmer doesn't need carbon.

Was I going someplace? Ohh I suppose I was. Do you bring that up as yet one more attempt at a barb or is it relevant to the conversation?

I see that again you are not commenting on the actual points being made, but are using ad-homenim tactics to discredit me. I have asked that you respond in context, but you keep posting little out of context snippets with bold titles. Funny how the real questions get lost in the muck isnt it!

Was there a requirement that participants do not run carbon? I don't remember saying that a skimmer SHOULD remove all of the yellow, you said that and I did not agree.

You have proposed tests to prove what skimmer does that. I have not agreed that they [your proposed test] will work.

I have tried to kindly show why. In return you have taken almost every point out of context and tried to discredit me without responding to my comments.

Carbon for my tank?
Let me say this again a different way:

In 2 years I have run less than 8 cups of carbon total and don't have "yellow" water now that I have a big skimmer. I don't do water changes but once in a blue moon and I overfeed more than most people. The coral is overstocked and at war constantly and the flow is not the greatest.

Thanks, but I will choose my skimmer based on what is in the cup and how the tank water looks and the livestock reacts. This thread is not about MY tank or YOUR tank it is about the ideas you have put forth. Can we get back to that instead of the useless one liners?

[pjf]

Originally posted by hahnmeister
The problem is still that then you would need two identically functioning systems... not just storage, for the two skimmers to run off of. You dont want to compare them under a limited supply (at least, I dont think you do)... you want to compare them on a functional system.

Here is an alternative although I do not think it is necessary. From your source of water (discarded water from a large marine system), simply keep replenishing the two test tanks in equal amounts.

The reason that I think the "limited supply" test tank suffices is because I just want to know how low a skimmer can reduce the concentration of a DOC. The skimmer cannot remove a DOC completely. Some of it will remain even after a week of skimming the "limited supply" 10-gallon tank.

The winning skimmer is the one that can reduce the DOC concentration the most. You can stop the test when the "point of diminishing returns" is reached. Just take periodic tests and when it appears that little more will be removed with time, declare the test to be done.

[BeanAnimal]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by pjf
[B]Here is an alternative although I do not think it is necessary. From your source of water (discarded water from a large marine system), simply keep replenishing the two test tanks in equal amounts.

The reason that I think the "limited supply" test tank suffices is because I just want to know how low a skimmer can reduce the concentration of a DOC. The skimmer cannot remove a DOC completely. Some of it will remain even after a week of skimming the "limited supply" 10-gallon tank.

But what about the concentration of said organics directly affecting the amount of each that are skimmed. As you have postulated, the more D that is removed, the more of the lesser components will be removed. If both skimmers remove those components in different ratios, then as the concentrations drop, the test results will be skewed between the two systems.

But lets forget that and get back to the basic logic being promoted:

Using the same logic you have postulated, if BOTH skimmers CAN remove D, then the skimmer with more in the cup should have more D.

IF NOT the above, then the skimmer with MORE in the cup but LESS D is what? The winner or loser? It has removed MORE from the tank, but less of the "D".

You MUST choose one of the above, it can not be both or anything else.

Skimmer 1 produces more skimmate (dried weight if you like)
Skimmer 2 produces less (dried weight if you like)

Skimmer 1 can either have more or less D than skimmer 2.

IF skimmer 1 produces MORE SKIMMATE and LESS D, then it removed more overall from the tank.

IF skimmer 1 produces MORE SKIMMATE and MORE D then it removed more overall from the tank

If Skimmer 1 produces LESS SKIMMATE and LESS D then it removed less overall from the tank

If skimmer 1 produces LESS SKIMMATE and MORE D then it removed less overall from the tank

There is your truth table. I hope you can see that more skimmate means more organics removed and less skimmate means less organics removed, but there is no direct corrolation to D.

If you want to argue that certain truth above CAN NOT happen, then feel free. That is exactly how we go about applying them to the logic of your or any postulate. I think once you apply them to your arguement some of the circular logic will become visible.

Let me try to put this another way.
Again, you can't have it both ways. If it is AS you state, then a simple observation of the cup is all that is needed. If you contend that a measurement needs to be taken and cup observation is useless, then it MUST be possible for a skimmer to skim MORE material but less D.

Which skimmer is better? The one that removes more organic material or the one that removes the target YOU are looking for.

If you insist that the skimmer with more D will also skim other compounds more, then it will have MORE in the cup. But you insist that observation of the skimmate is useless. It can't be both ways.

[sherm71tank]

“Some organics require up to 2 full minutes of contact time with air bubbles in a skimmer before they are removed via foam fractioning.� – (http://www.hawkfish.org/snailman/skimmer101.htm)

This is true for an airstone skimmer from 1985 that had 5 SCFH of air running through it? They tested and identified these "two minute proteins" back then but I'll be damned if anyone can name one today. This two minute protein parroting is driving me up friggin wall guys. Last time I'll bring it up in this thread. WHAT IS/ARE these proteins? And PLEASE don't quote someone else's article about someone else's work that doesn't identify the protein (or whatever it may be) that takes two minutes to skim. I'm not trying to sound argumentative but this is brought up continuously and to my knowledge there is no proof.

[BeanAnimal]

I suppose that the time and/or the structure of the proteins is not that important. The fact to walk away with is that it would appear that each protein has a makeup that makes it more or less soluble. It would follow that it would take a different amount of time to bond those proteins.

I think most of us are comfortable with at least that conclusion.

[sherm71tank]

I am not. I am more comfortable with proteins A,B and C being effectively removed from the system and making D more likely to be removed (if it exists) and/or eliminating the presence of the D protein before it has a chance to exist.

[BeanAnimal]

That does bring up yet one more facet.

If the harder to remove organics are a result of lesser compounds combining, then the skimmer that removes lesser compounds faster MAY prevent the hard to remove substances from ever forming. That would go a long way to the wet skimming arguement.

[sherm71tank]

You don't skim wet? It's still an argument?

[BeanAnimal]

I skim very wet. If I keep the skimmer clean, I can get nearly 3/4 a gallon of between ice tea and green tea skimmate a day, with a lot of floating stuff. If I don't clean the neck, it really slows down after about 24 hours... so even after 6 days the cup is not full. I do not have the time or desire to clean the cup daily.. so I get about a gallon to a gallon and a half of darker stuff a week.

[sherm71tank]

I skim wet too. Mine is still a dark wet though like coffee. If you're in the area I'd love to show you what I have running. Not exactly by the normal Beckett rules. ( I run my DIY Beckett wide open on 3/8" fittings and airline and pull over 100 SCFH on 80 watts and it's under 30" tall). Anyhow, back to the yellow water problem!

I say skim as aggressively as you can, with as much air as possible. So far IME that means a Beckett skimmer.

[BeanAnimal]

I steered away from the becket for many reasons.

I was worried about noise
I was worried about tuning sensitivity
I was worried about cost of pumps and wattage

I went with an RC 7' tall beast. I had started making it a CC airstone skimmer, but chickened out due to the nightmare of building easily serviceable stones into and at the same time not turning it into a Rube Goldberg project.

As for coming over... I don't associate with the other camp... I am an Einstein guy

[hahnmeister]

Yeah... my pick is a 6'+ tall recirc that is force fed by an Alita. 6" diameter & 1000lph for up to 150 gallons, 8" diameter & 2000lph for up to 266 gallons, 10" diameter and 3000lph for up to 416 gallons, or 12" diameter and 4000lph for up to 600 gallons. See, when you go tall, the turbulence isnt as big a deal either... all that height starts to sort stuff out. The challenge is getting enough air into the skimmer at that height... which means large pumps and water turbulence... but not if you just use one pump and force feed it. Then, with lack of water turbulence, you can easily blow that much more air into the skimmer. So if you look at the air throughput per body diameter area in comparison to the shorter, fat skimmers, the taller ones can actually pack more air in and still keep turbulence minimal.

Thats the way to do it IMO. A tall, force fed needlewheel. Bubble plate, cone shape up in the neck or whole body... etc... all all good 'add-on' ideas... but height and huge air throughput will get the job done, no matter how you believe it is done.

[pjf]

Originally posted by hahnmeister
Thats the way to do it IMO. A tall, force fed needlewheel. Bubble plate, cone shape up in the neck or whole body... etc... all all good 'add-on' ideas... but height and huge air throughput will get the job done, no matter how you believe it is done.

Would your skimmer have co-current or counter-current flow?
What's meant by force-feeding?

[BeanAnimal]

Your a bubble plate guy now... and a tall skinny guy to boot? I just fell outa my chair and drooled on the dog.

My problem is that the freakin OR3500 chokes at somewhere btween 23-28 SCFH (depending on how it feels for the day).

I ported it out with a dremel, but am not sure it helped (it may have hurt). I force feed it with an Alita. I hate that freakin noisy Ocean Runner pump. The Alita... well I will never purchase another brand.

[BeanAnimal]

It could be setup to be fed either from the top or the bottom. Most of us feed them from the bottom right into the mouth of the recirc pump.

Force feeding is using an air pump instead of reliance in a venturi. At the taller heights a venturi does not work very well due to the head pressure on the venturi.

[sherm71tank]

Originally posted by BeanAnimal
I steered away from the becket for many reasons.

I was worried about noise
I was worried about tuning sensitivity
I was worried about cost of pumps and wattage

I went with an RC 7' tall beast. I had started making it a CC airstone skimmer, but chickened out due to the nightmare of building easily serviceable stones into and at the same time not turning it into a Rube Goldberg project.

As for coming over... I don't associate with the other camp... I am an Einstein guy

What a shame. Jonathan and I have all kinds of fun with dark strong beer and reef tanks. Maybe in the next life! (BTW I'm doing my best to get him to recirc a Mazzei 780 on his monster airstone skimmer.)

[BeanAnimal]

Was that the big square one?

My tank room is off the side of my home office and the tank is an inwall that faces the home theater. I am not sure if I could live with the noise of a becket. The OR3500 is driving me insane, as are the 4 PC fans that I use to evap cool. Before the fans and the skimmer, the tank was DEAD silent. I mean you could not tell water was moving unless you touched one of the pumps... no joke.

[hahnmeister]

Bean,
I was never a 'bubble plate' guy or not one. Maybe some people got the wrong idea when I commented about how a year or so ago the 'fad' seemed to try to modify every skimmer out there with a bubble plate, which I was trying to point out might actually work against you depending on the situation. If you have a skimmer body that is too narrow, the bubble plate is more like a wide hose... and it doesnt diffuse turbulence so well... kinda like the bubble plates on an ATI. You might be better off just aiming the outlet of the pump down into the skimmer, or if the body of the skimmer is large enough in diameter, swirl it. I was never against bubble plates... I just dont think they get implimented very well. Its not just something you can slap in and then make a guess as to how many holes or what diameter they should be.

Over the past year, I have figured out 3-4 ways that you can actually pack a small bubble plate into a taller, narrow skimmer. A spherical bubble diffuser rather than a plate. A taller bubble diffuser chamber with a water bleed at the bottom, etc. So there are ways... But still, I dont think I could give up preferring a taller skimmer all together... thats why I could never bite the bullet and buy a short & fat bubbleplate style. I have figured out how to convert any traditional needlewheel into a 'bubbleplate' skimmer though... so one could convert their deltec AP into a BK or ATB... just 2 parts needed (somewhat fancy parts, but still reversable).

Honestly, when you start feeding an eheim 1262 threadwheel anything over about 1600lph of air, the output turns into shaving cream... so its not like you even need a plate on a taller skimmer when you force feed it.

Always been a tall skinny guy though... always. I could never give up the height. The current skimmer is just 'enough' for what I have now at 30" tall, but my intention was to run a 5' skimmer all along. I can see how the turbulence reduction can make up for being shorter, as long as its done right that is. Look at the 22" tall ATB cone. Then look at a H&S A200 1260 that is just under 30" tall. They really very similar stats-wise. Same pump, same distance from the pump outlet to the top of the skimmer. But the H&S is more turbulent, while the ATB uses that plate. So while the H&S bubbles might have the same distance to go, the ATB seems to do it under better circumstances. Im sure that shaking off some turbulence can in effect add to the height of the 22" ATB, which is really the same if not better than as the 30" H&S then in the end. Otherwise, this is the design I was considering:

4' tall AND a bubble plate.

Try the eheim Bean. Just buy the 1262 pump, then plumb it w/o venturi of course (force feed), and get the needlewheel impeller from Euroreef, and cut the pins off... drill holes like the ATI, and add 4 layers of PF4... it will rock. Much quieter than that OR. Heck, maybe the stock ER needlewheel is enough for your skimmer from what it sounds like. Cooler tool. But yeah... I have never gone over 28 scfh (about 800lph) with the OR 3700s. I would say its a good match for a tall skimmer if you didnt force feed... but thats not the case. I never did try meshing mine though... could help. Meshing seems to help the maximum air handling of any pump when force fed. I swear I could get that eheim up to 3000 or 4000lph.

Not knocking Alita one bit, but the GAST ones seem to be the same thing (some of them at least). Ever messed with them? I see them showing up on Ebay all the time for cheap (some smaller/more convenient sizes as well). I wonder if maybe they arent the OEM for Alita?

[sherm71tank]

Yeah it's the big square one. Ask Jonathan if he can hear my Beckett. Other than the sound of air intake (which is easily taken care of with a muffler and you should be so lucky to have that problem) it makes no noise. A quiet tank is a happy tank!

[BeanAnimal]

Wanna mod that OR3700 with mesh and let me know how it works

As for the 1262, I suppose I could try. Will it run vertical (intake facing down) and stay quiet?

Wanna mod one up for me I just don't have the time.

[hahnmeister]

Originally posted by pjf
Would your skimmer have co-current or counter-current flow?
What's meant by force-feeding?

Counter Current, with a diffuser ring up top for the water to enter w/o disturbing the column up top.

Force feeding has several advantages. One is you dont need a venturi (in fact you dont want one... maybe a valve on the water intake, but thats it). The next is that you can pump waaay more into most needlewheel pumps before they start to pass larger bubbles than when they are generating their own suction, esp with threadwheel pumps. And the other advantage is that since you are moving more air, the pump is moving less water. Your wattage on the pump will drop, and your water turbulence goes waaaay down (the outputs can end up looking like its simply 'pouring out' upside-down). You can use one or two eheim needlewheels to feed a 4-6' tall body that is 12" around with over 4000lph of air... something impossible to do otherwise. A taller needlewheel would require more pumps to deal with the head pressure, and that means more water turbulence, so more body diameter/lph of air just for that. I have changed my design since last though too... so pay no attention to that diagram I posted. I came up with much better since.

And then there is the other option of ozone. There is an easy way to increase the attraction of the bubbles with the proteins in the skimmer. Otherwise, I might try Purigen after the ATB skimmer is reviewed.

[JCTewks]

Lot's of great ideas to ponder over...but I think it somes down to the fact/statement that yellowing compounds/CDOC cannot be skimmed from the aquarium without the use of ozone. THe best way to avoid yellowing is to remove as much of A, B, C, AND D as you can to keep them from breaking down into CDOC's.

IMO, the only way to avoid yellowing without carbon or ozone is lots of water changes.

As for testing, the one nig flaw I see with all of the tests proposed is that there is no repeatability. After all, what good is an experiment that cannot be duplicated and validated by your peers/colleagues? For any real testing there would have to be a way to make new salt water from a certain brand of salt mix with 0 TDS RO/DI water and then add an exact amount of something(i'm not sure what) that will replicate all of the DOC's and other stuff that is in our tanks. That would be repeatable and effective at testing more than 2 skimmers. You cold also do a comparative analysis of the skimate, and the water quality and be able to have valid, pertinent info to compare to any new skimmer that comes onto the market that you would like to test.

The big problem is what do you add to the NSW that will replicate a thriving reef that is available to most and easily duplicatable?

[BeanAnimal]

I almost did the water ring input.... but decided I would not gain much (I could be very wrong). It is only a 6" PVC (clear) body.