Need help DIY'ers on skimmer mod

S

salty_75

OK, well I got a skimmer from quangtam7 (thanks agian) that was missing the venturi's and wanted to go ahead and modify. In the pic below you can see i added a beckett style injector (http://cgi.ebay.com/1-Beckett-Protein-Skimmer-Injector-Assembly-Live-Coral_W0QQitemZ7706227270QQcategoryZ20758QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
and have it ran by a mag 7. The skimmer is about 2ft and mixing tube is 8" diameter I believe.

The problem is that the water level is going up all the way to the top of the riser and should only go up to the flange. My best guess is that the outlet can't handle the flow, it is only 1" and the two inlets are 1/2". Ideally it would have a 1 1/2" outlet. I don't think it would be because the mag 7, which probably is only getting 625 going in at 2 ft head. I have heard of people using mag 9 on these things. I was doing the initial test, so I just used freshwater and I don't think it needs to be SW except for bubble performance testing.

Any ideas on why the water is going so high or any other mod ideas???
 
Any info on how it is plumbed inside the chamber? Is there an inner chamber? Link to plans for this DIY?
 
Yea, here is the link for the OEM website.
http://www.topfathom.com/top-fathom.html
the model shown is slightly different than mine because mine has the outlet at top and pvc inside goes down to draw from bottom (w/o bubbles).

No chambers on this skimmer. I am considering scrapping the whole thing and using the collection cup and flanges somehow (maybe cut those off).

The mod is my own plans. If you go the website (http://www.topfathom.com/pump.html) it also gives pump recommendations and it says up to an iwake 40rlt. I was actually planning on using a mag 9.5
 
Hi Eric,

Try removing the valve. This should give you some more flow out of the outlet. I would say that this is the problem as you think. You could put a larger diameter outlet. Also, moving it down would help. The other thing you could do is put a valve at the inlet and restrict the mag 7. Moving it down could cause more bubbles to return to your sump. Putting a valve at the inlet decreases the number of bubbles. Both of these will reduce the efficiency of the skimming so are not ideal. The best thing of course would be to increase the riser but I don't know if this is possible.

Does the outlet have a tube inside the skimmer body that goes to the bottom to prevent the bubbles from coming out? You could increase the diameter of this also if this is the case.

Just ideas?
 
My "from the hip" guess is that with the exit so high you don't have as much water pressure on the exit water and it is reducing your volume leaving the skimmer. You'd have to increase the pipe size or lower the exit imo. hope this helps.
 
yea, I guess it has to be the outlet. Yes, the outlet from the outside appears to be drawing water from the top, but on the inside the 1" tube goes to near the bottom to draw water w/o bubbles. I guess I could drill a bigger outlet and plug the original. I also prefer the lower exit however for using it externally it may be better so that the outlet water can flow over the top and into the sump.

I still don't see how this thing ever worked because my beckett is more restrictive i thought than the two venturies would be and the mag 7 is actually the lower of the pump size recommendation. I think the outlet should be about twice the size of inlet, and in this case I'm not sure because of the dual 1/2", which I think flows about the same as a 3/4" pipe (could be wrong, and yes i know 1/2 plus 1/2 is 1" but it works differently i think)

I will try restricting the pump, but that is not an ideal solution. The water inlet tube being so high wouldn't cause this would it?
 
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