CO2 Scrubber on a Tunze 9004 skimmer?

vinsonj · Dec 19, 2021

Anyone else have a C02 scrubber attached to their Tunze 9004 skimmer? If so, would you mind sharing how you have it setup? Just connected to the airline from the silencer, or have you DIY'ed some sort of re-circulator? Did you have to add some sort of air pump? Do you run it 24/7, or did you add a solenoid to a controller (in my case, it'd be an Apex)? Thanks in advance for your help!

TexanCanuck · Dec 21, 2021

I don't have that skimmer, but after looking at the instruction manual on the Tunze website it seems like using it with a CO2 scrubber would be a simple matter of disconnecting the airline tubing from the silencer and instead connecting it to the outlet of the Scrubber.

MY only concern here is the length of that tube ... certainly not helpful if you have a bulky CO2 scrubber, and I'd worry about simply using a longer tube ... the longer tube will certainly increase resistance to airflow and may reduce the amount of air that the skimmer can ingest. So if you need to lengthen that tube, I'd suggest using an adapter to step up the diameter of the tube for the extension.

With respect to using a "recirculating" CO2 scrubber, you need to keep in mind that these really only work if you can effectively seal the skimmate collection cup and prevent it from leaking air to the surrounding environment ... which is not straight forward if you also want to make it easy to remove that cup every few days for cleaning.

Again, while I have not used this specific model of skimmer, I'd suspect that there enough leak paths around the collection cup and lid that would suggest a recirculating arrangement might not give you the benefits you are looking for.

Besides, the skimmer is small enough that the air flow rate won't exhaust the CO2 adsorption media all that quickly (I assume).

jimmypencil · Jan 6, 2023

vinsonj said:
Anyone else have a C02 scrubber attached to their Tunze 9004 skimmer? If so, would you mind sharing how you have it setup? Just connected to the airline from the silencer, or have you DIY'ed some sort of re-circulator? Did you have to add some sort of air pump? Do you run it 24/7, or did you add a solenoid to a controller (in my case, it'd be an Apex)? Thanks in advance for your help!

im planning on getting this skimmer and adding a co2 scrubber. did you end up setting one up? if so how do you like it? i see there is a 3d printed cup you can use for recirculation

vinsonj · Jan 7, 2023

jimmypencil said:
im planning on getting this skimmer and adding a co2 scrubber. did you end up setting one up? if so how do you like it? i see there is a 3d printed cup you can use for recirculation

I did add a CO2 scrubber to this skimmer, but honestly, it was too small to make much of a difference. I ended up going with a bigger tank, and with it a sump and larger skimmer that I, again attached the CO2 scrubber to. This time, with the bigger skimmer, it definitely made a difference with my pH (went from 7.7-7.9, to 8.1-8.3)