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chris.rogers 
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 Topic: DIY Skimmer
Posted: December 01 2006 at 12:37pm |
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I'm curious as to how to build a skimmer for a 29 gallon tank. I'd like it to be able to skim well enough for SPS and LPS.
Anyone know where some decent plans are?
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jfinch
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Posted: December 01 2006 at 1:04pm |
In-sump or hang on the back? I'd look hard at an Aqua C "style" skimmer for a tank that size. They should be pretty easy to reverse engineer  .
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chris.rogers
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Posted: December 01 2006 at 1:32pm |
lol I'm not sure which would work better. I'm reading Skimmer Design 101 and trying to figure out which is the best. They seem to talk about different ways of skimming rather than hob/in sump. I assume in sump would give me a bigger skimmer, so to speak, and provide me with more options. In the meantime, how do I get my hands on how an Aqua C works? Here's the link to the site I'm reading: http://www.hawkfish.org/snailman/skimmer101.htm
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jfinch
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Posted: December 01 2006 at 3:23pm |
If you have a sump then I'd say to definitely do an in the sump skimmer.
My take on skimmers is simple. All you need is a way to inject air and water into a "box" that allows for easy removal of the foam that gathers at the top and also allows the water to exit without carrying air bubbles with it. The air bubbles should be as plentiful and small as possible. That's it.
The two methods (that I know of) to generate the bubbles/air are venturi type and air pump and air stone. There are many subtypes of venturi skimmers: venturi valve with (euroreef/ASM) or without impeller agitation, Beckett head and induction (ETSS, AquaC). They all work but they all have their drawbacks too.
you'll need a free tif viewer to see the pictures:
Edited by jfinch - December 01 2006 at 3:25pm
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chris.rogers
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Posted: December 06 2006 at 11:20am |
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Hey Jon,
The other day I tried to follow those links to the patents, and all I got was bupkis.
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Ils sont fous, ces Romains!
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jfinch
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Posted: December 06 2006 at 2:18pm |
Download and install the .tif viewer from internetiff.com first. Then when you click on the link for the AquaC skimmer patent you should get a page that says "Search time limit has expired. Please click on the full text button to return to the full text page." Click on "Full Text" over on the left hand side. That should take you to this page:
This is the text only version of the patent. You'll see a button at the top of the page that says "Images". Click on it and you'll get the nice graphic version of the patent. The AuqaC patent is 19 pages long with a complete explaination of how it works and even some of the injection nozzle designs they tried and abandoned. Pretty informative stuff.
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Dion Richins
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Posted: December 06 2006 at 10:12pm |
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Im useing an Aqua c Urchin on my 29. Im very happy with it.
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chris.rogers
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Posted: December 07 2006 at 9:23am |
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Dion, (That's freaking fantastic work on the hood/stand I saw at Aquatic Dreams, by the way)
Is the 'urchin' the one that you basically built from scratch from the Aqua C plans?
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Ils sont fous, ces Romains!
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Dion Richins
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Posted: December 07 2006 at 9:53am |
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No its there in sump unit. I picked it up off of e-bay new for about $80.00. I used it on my 60g for a couple of years and have been very happy with it.
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