"A cup a day"

Keep in mind that he said a cup a day between skimming and other nutrient exports (i.e. algae).

 

Good luck! Keep us posted!

jamison,


After reading Calfo's thread on skimmer production, I think one of the simplest method to increase your skimmer production. Suspend the solids longer in hopes they reach your skimmer.
His presentation on closed loop manifolds was inspiring. Why don't we get together and build a couple?

Edited by Shane H

Sounds like us slackers down south that missed out on the meeting missed a few good tips.  Is there any way that you may be able to share with me either with description or a nice drawing of the idea on this manifold as anyway to get rid of power heads and still have enough water movement sounds like a good plan.

The closed loop is extremely easy.  All my plumping is in the tank so, I was able to do alot of testing to see what worked and what didn't.  I did find out that placing a single 't' with a 90 angle at the end didn't work.  The flow out of the 't' was only a trickle.  I am using a rio 2100 (692gph) and have three 90's before the 90 outlet in 3/4 tubing, which seems to work fine.  I would like a bit more flow though. 

The pressure of my pump wasn't great enough to cause any major leaks.  If anything it would probably on drip if the tubing was slipped in tightly.   So, if you are creating an external system you should mold the pvc together on external connections, but you can allow the pvc in the tank to remain unglued which will allow you to 'tweak' the system and if you're like me that's almost a daily ritual.

John

Closed loops are simple simple...

I built on this weekend, and one last night wiht a friend...

If you can setup and maintain a Saltwater tank, you can definitely build a
manifold. It took me less than an hour (after I had the supplies) Of
course the first pump I tried wasn't good enough, so I have a new
1536gph pump that arrives today... I'm excited to see how it goes.

There is an obundance of info on RC about the closed loop, anthony's
section. I don't run a simmer so I definitely don't get a cup a day... but I
get close to a cup a day every other week of caulerpa

I have a theory I've put together about the "cup a day" after talking with Anthony and reading some of the info on his threads on RC.

I never thought of having your overflow water tapped directly to your sump, but Anthony made that sound like a great alternative. 

So, what do you think of this...  If you had an overflow all the way across the tank that drew off the first 32nd or 16th inch of water and flowed that straight out of a drain at the top of the tank instead of falling to the bottom of the tank first, then flowed that water directly into you're skimmer.  This way you could constantly skim that crud that collects at the surface of the water off the top and ALL of that crud would go directly to the skimmer to get skimmed out.

The way most of us have our tanks set up the water flows in from the first 1/4 to 3/4 inch of tank water leaving a lot of crud on the surface.  This water then goes to the sump and "some" of it gets pumped into the skimmer by the pump connected to the skimmer.  The rest of it is either left in the sump and eventually rises to the surface of the sump and stays there, or is pumped back into the tank having never been skimmed.

The idea of routing all of the water to the skimmer seemed to me a fantastic idea as it would ALL be processed.  The drawback I can see here is it might take a very large skimmer to handle all of the water being served to it from a large tank.

This may help get that "Cup a day."

Edited by wsinbad1

I get close to a cup a day......

I feed close to 2 cups a day!