Converting a Pass-Through Skimmer to a Recirculator

[Water Dog]

You have an air flow meter or just wing it? I'd love to see what it pulls on a pw 200 with a big mazzi

Eyeball/wing it

Dead serious... for the sake of science, Simon can I please drop off or mail you my Dwyer air flow meter just so we can see how much air this Frankensteined beast can pull?

 

[ca1ore]

Leon, you’re always welcome to swing by. It’ll be a few weeks before I actually get this thing moved in though. I’m thinking to start by using the dual 1” mazzei. It’d be quite interesting to see how they and the dual Beckett’s compare. Sounds like a good way to blow a Saturday LOL.

 

[Water Dog]

Sweet, I’ll shoot you a PM soon.

 

[ca1ore]

Leon, ran your air meter - skimmer pinned it! May have to actually read the instructions to make sure i used it right. I tend to be a disciple of Bob the Builder - instructions are for people who don’t know what they are doing .

 

[ca1ore]

Been away a lot for my job this month (extremely tedious - I hate flying) and it’s been too cold to test fill the skimmer. That changed yesterday (50 degrees in the garage). $&#@ thing leaks like a seive. Appears the gaskets are all dried out. No biggie, I’ll just cut new ones from some neoprene sheets I have laying around. Made quite a mess though . My son peeked in, uttered a monosyllabic ‘nice’ and went back to staring at his phone.

On the positive side, this sucker is going to be a monster. Even with FW (which doesn’t allow for small bubbles) the air draw from dual 1” mazzei is just crazy.

 

[Water Dog]

Leon, ran your air meter - skimmer pinned it! May have to actually read the instructions to make sure i used it right. I tend to be a disciple of Bob the Builder - instructions are for people who don’t know what they are doing .

That’s crazy impressive that your beast pinned it at over 50 scfh. Makes me wish I got an air meter with greater range, but I got that one to specifically test my 24” Lifereef. By comparison, look at @jason2459 ’s numbers for various skimmers and his modded 36” MTC MVX skimmer (post #14).

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/mtc-mvx-skimmer-review.252436/#post-2991740

 

[rockskimmerflow]

Been away a lot for my job this month (extremely tedious - I hate flying) and it’s been too cold to test fill the skimmer. That changed yesterday (50 degrees in the garage). $&#@ thing leaks like a seive. Appears the gaskets are all dried out. No biggie, I’ll just cut new ones from some neoprene sheets I have laying around. Made quite a mess though . My son peeked in, uttered a monosyllabic ‘nice’ and went back to staring at his phone.

On the positive side, this sucker is going to be a monster. Even with FW (which doesn’t allow for small bubbles) the air draw from dual 1” mazzei is just crazy.

Super cool skimmer! I think it's almost exactly my height haha. The only bigger ones I've seen in person are the giant R2K units that most of the wholesalers and public aquariums run. And honestly those do not appear to be very efficient for their size judging by the terrible foam density/quality I see in them when I'm at the livestock warehouses. I've never dabbled with the larger injector style old school skimmers. Have used a couple small ones in the past, but currently run needlewheels on all my systems that have skimmers. I'm curious to see how that panworld 200 PS does once you're running the skimmer salty. I have couple as return pumps on tanks and my goodness that pump is formidable against head pressure. It feels almost twice as strong as the 150PS does in my experience. A bit stronger even than an iwaki md-70rlt IMO, but not quite to the level of a 100rlt.

My main coral grow system has 4 prop tanks and a huge sump, but they are mostly shallow tanks so I've only got roughly 420 gallons of water in the system. Currently I'm using one of those stubby needle wheel pass through skimmers which hasn't been my favorite to be honest. The best thing I can say is the pumps are super reliable askoll motors. The primary drawback is I have to have the pump inlets fully restricted to their lowest setting and the air adjustments wide open just to prevent the pumps from overpowering the skimmer body with water flow. If I recall the pumps each pulled like 1,800lph of air when I ran them at wide open to test it after I first got it online. 3600lph of combined air draw is way overkill IMO for a sub 500 gal system so I guess it works out that I had to dial the pumps back to reduce the water throughput in the first place- they probably could have built it with one pump honestly. Curious to see how your skimmer performs on a similar sized water volume system. I'm not in any shortage of room in my filter area so I may get the itch to pick up something more old school if yours appears to outpace my new fangled needlewheel model in skimmate quality/production. I get about 2-3 gal of dark greenish brown muck a week depending on how aggressive I'm feeding.

Following eagerly!

 

[jason2459]

Thanks for the tag. This thread is awesome. I got the idea to increase the size of the air intake from ca1ore. He used a union I think but I wanted to keep the size down.

 

[ca1ore]

Plan is to do a final leak test in the garage and then move this thing in. Leon, I'll then use your air meter on it once running in place to confirm draw. I've used most of the PW pump models and the 200 is significantly more powerful than the 150. Latter powers my current MTC skimmer but won't be enough for the new one. I'm going to use the dual 1" mazzei initially (rather than the becketts) and see. I prefer the design - mainly much easier to clean.

 

[Scott Allen]

These are things I wanted to try on a recirculating skimmer, maybe they would work for you.

Set up UV on the re-circulation loop.

1. I would want to try to create a mini AOP (advanced oxidation process) setup. UV + Ozone = Hydroxyl Radical (Powerful disinfectant/anti-oxidant). If the ozone is input into the system with a venturi injector, and we would want to skim out the disinfected parts afterword, the only place to put the UV skimmer would be inside the skimmer itself. I think bubbles would inhibit the UV effectiveness, so the UV would have to be on a recirculating loop.
   
2. Setup would be Skimmer > Recirc Pump > UV > Venturi. > Skimmer.

Dose RODI water into the Venturi Injector on a set schedule

1. Self-Cleaning Venturi and Air tube can pull air from anywhere.
   
2. Would need to use a peristaltic pump so venturi doesn't create a siphon and nuke the tank.
3. I would set up a 1" dia x 3" long clear tube, attached vertically above venturi. Bottom would have 1 outlet to venturi, and top would have 2 inputs (1 to fresh air, 1 to RODI pump). This is so it would function like an IV drip chamber and we could monitor if it is sucking water when it is not suppose to be.

 

[ca1ore]

I’ve been running an auto flush on my mazzei injectors for years - I just use tank water rather than ATO water. I’d posted it over on RC. Don’t think I did here though. You don’t have to worry about a siphon if you design it right.

 

[ca1ore]

Only one tiny leak left to fix .....

 

[ca1ore]

Ordered the wrong gasket material - it stunk to high heaven!!! Reordered and the right stuff arrived yesterday. All leaks banished. I did have to enlarge the drain in the collection cup as it's limiting the air draw. All set to swap this thing out this coming weekend.

 

[ca1ore]

Finally swapped it in. Had to close the airdraw down significantly to prevent overflow. Still pinning the air meter though.

 

[Water Dog]

That’s some serious Frankenstein engineering! Your DIY skills, from your stand, ATS and now this, never cease to amaze me. Impressive for sure!

 

[chicago]

.... not to sound stupid.. but can you explain the benifits of what you have seen with this mod.. I have had this unit for 15 years... my issue has always been keeping it tunes.. meaning just enough water level in the unit to keep foam production over the top.. off course I have always had the usuall becket clogs.. but every few days I hit the intakes (air( with some ro water...

My skimmer is in a large sump so spills and slights leaks not an issue.. thanks for the input.. great build

 

[ca1ore]

Not stupid at all …… my own bias is that the only two things that really affect skimmer performance are contact time and air draw. The idea behind extending the reaction column is to increase contact time. I had the HSA1000 for many years and was not a fan of the beckett, thus my swapping here for dual mazzei. We shall see how much of a difference all this makes (it's only been on the tank for a few days). I like a project, so part of the motivation is to keep me amused.

 

[chicago]

hey hey another task master..... i hear you.... dual mazzei... lets talk for a sec.. any issue with additional power,,,pump power need when using the mazzie compared to the becket.. i converted my pump... Iwakie 100 RLT died.. replaced with DC 12,000 the strongest one they make.. it seems to do pretty good.. ... I really have no issues with cleaning of my beckets.. but if the air mix is better I would take on a task building a retor with for the Mazzie

 

[ca1ore]

I always found the becket to be twitchy. I made two swappable injector assemblies for this skimmer - one with the standard dual beckets, one with dual 1" mazzei. I'm using the latter for now. Pump is a Panworld 200/Blueline 70 which I think is broadly comparable to the Iwaki 70. Seems more than enough pump for the injectors. I also converted the skimmer to a recirculator, figuring I would end up with less debris buildup in the injectors. Once I get the measure of it with the mazzei, I will switch back to the beckets just to see.

 

[chicago]

nice work..thanks for the info.. you should make and sell the extenders.. I would buy one for sure...LOL... keep us updated.