Happy New Year everyone!
One of my new years resolutions is to do more DIY items to the tank. Back in the day that is what we all did. It was rare I would buy anything that I couldn't build myself. Over the last couple of years, I find myself spending a ton of money on things I can make myself.
I have been looking at skimmers because the two skimmers I have just don't seem to be cutting it on the system. They either overflow quickly or dry skim very slow. Skimmers for the size of my system would cost $3-4,000. I started thinking of some DIY skimmers I could make. I started pricing large PVC and Acrylic and still found it getting pricey.
I decided to try something out. It looks ghetto but this thing pulls skimmate out that makes my skimmers look like a joke. It is in my garage in my 300 stock tank sump so I don't care what it looks like as long as it works.
Built it for $30 minus the Jebao pump I had laying around. Meet the Venturi driven Bucket skimmer! This is my test run today. I took out my skimmate from my existing skimmer and dumped it in the test bucket. It pulled this out within 2 minutes.
I wiped all the skimmate out and you can see how it still comes pumping out
I took the collection cup off and the foam looks good in the body.
I ended up adding a third bucket on the bottom after the test run to add more dwell time. The final design is all glued and drying in the garage. I plan on turning this on in the system tomorrow to see what it can really do!
It might be ghetto but what do you all think?
