protein skimmer..Awesome!!!

[gjs63]

We made this some years ago using a Hayward jaquzzi jet fot the bubbles. I have an article from Koi USA and was reprinted in MAKC news and parts changed but I was unable to attach it due to size. This worked pretty good on our pond then,, the pond was about 2500 gals. That black part is a 2" to 4" reducing 'T',,, Just to give you and idea of size. I would be able to email the article to you if your intrested. sorry about the fog,,,when I went otside to take the picture the camera fogged up. Joyce

[keokoi]

Quote: Originally Posted by Brutuscz ...ahhh, the famous beckett injectors..I know them well. I had my 150 reef tank for 6 years...and sold it last saturday. I'm moving next month, so I figured it would be easier to get some dough and start from scratch. Miss the reef a real lot though..but not the electric bill that came with it. 1200 watts of metal halides, and a chiller, can get real expensive to run. reefing makes koi keeping look cheap!!! Energy efficient is NOT an option in the reef hobby!!!

Nope its not energy effecient. I had 1492 watts of Metal halides and compacts. The first time I came back from Japan.. I had such an amazing experience not to mention my wallet exploded... The first thing I sold was the reef tank.

Joe

[mitten]

This could help...http://home.netcom.com/~larry_l/foam_fract.htm

[mekoi]

Hi Guys,

I have one in my filter chamber. It does the job for 10,000L pond Made from scraps but does the job. It runs on 2 air stones.



rgds,
Jon

[L5Vegan]

Hi Guys,
Just saw the thread or I would have replied earlier.
Here is the basics on the skimmer copied from the origional thread. Basically a variation of the downdraft skimmers. Plusses are no airpump and stones to be maintained, and no major restriction to flow like a spa venturi.
Dan

Trickle Tower/ Protein Skimmer
A few months ago I had a bio-ball partially plug the outlet of my shower filter on the basement pond and the water level rose to the bottom of the lowest tray. After a couple of days there was foam building up in the tray which gave me an idea for a protein skimmer ( of course someone else had the idea a long time ago ).
All protein skimmers work on two basic principles ( Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I've pieced this together from the back of sugar packets :yes: ).
1. Many undesirable compounds in our water are attracted to the air-water interface.
2. The more of these compounds that are on a bubble the longer the bubble will last.
Most traditional protein skimmers use these principals by injecting air into a chamber of water to get the compounds close to the interface so that they will attach to it. Then the bubbles rise up a pipe where they can concentrate the compounds as they break. They finaly exit the top of the pipe to a collection cup that is emptied or has a drain line.
This method works better on salt water than fresh because the bubbles produced in salt water are much smaller than in fresh and have a far greater surface area (There are probably other reasons, but I don't know what they are ).
The other way to get the same result is to spread the water very thin to get all of it close to the air. This is where the trickle tower comes in.
I had some 6" by 4" drain Ys around so thats the size I decided to use. The first two tries used 2.5 feet of pipe above the Y and 6 inches below. 1.5 inch bio balls are used for the media.

Both were placed in a gravity fed filter sump.
I wanted to see if the splashing action of design A would create more foam than B because I had to use plastic hardware cloth at the four inch opening on B to keep in the bio balls, and the foam would have to pass through this mesh.
There was a lot of foam produced, but the six inches below the Y wasn't enough depth to contain it.

I pulled out the towers the next night and changed them both to design C. Each tower holds around 540 balls.

I drilled the bottoms of the new pipe and fastened egg crate to them with ty-wraps.

I got the new design running about midnight and this was what had been produced by 6:00 am.

The good news is that these are on a shallow, overstocked pond in full sun and cleared the water from pure green :sick: to clear :yes: in about three days.
Since then foam production is way down but is constant.
I'd love to tell you how they work on a proper koi pond, but being that I don't have a pond like that I really wouldn't know. Obviously a pond with low DOC's in the first place would have less to remove, but if You had a pond like that then you already know about dimminished returns and a small improvement is that much closer to perfection.

I'll check the flows and report it later.
Dan

[cocoyboy]

Dang, good job! Looks really productive with skimming, and a lot of skimming at that! How does the water come out of the inlet pipe? Just free flow and then splash on through the bio balls, or did you hook up a sprayer. I want one.

[L5Vegan]

Quote: Originally Posted by cocoyboy Dang, good job! Looks really productive with skimming, and a lot of skimming at that! How does the water come out of the inlet pipe? Just free flow and then splash on through the bio balls, or did you hook up a sprayer. I want one.

I drilled some 1/4" holes in 1 1/2" caps
Tested the flow and came up with ~1400 GPH/Tower (2gallons in 5 sec).
Here are the sprayers.

A pic of them running.

The collection barrel after all the foam has broken down.

A new high protien drink that I'm going to start selling.

The good news is that I got that glass washed and put back away without getting caught.
Dan

[luke frisbee]

Dan, the bad news is that you can't remember which one it is.

[LizardBreath]

I know you could go to Groovey Boulder Colorado and open a umm high protein sludge bar. You could make a fortune. Put some food coloring in it so it is green.

Beth

[Gallagher]

Dan
Very interesting design!
I'm a little slow so bare with me on my questions. You say that the PS sits in a gravity feed sump. So what you're saying is that the water is pumped to the PS trickle tower and the exit water falls(?) into the sump where it gravity flows back to the pond, right? What I don't understand is how the foam moves out the Y?
Or is the PS sitting in water that hasn't risen to the exit pipe yet?
So water pumped to the TT/PS (which sits on the bottom of the sump barrel) exits the bottom of the PS via holes or slots to the void area between the inside barrel wall and the outside PS wall eventually working it's way up to the level of the sumps' exit pipe which returns it to the pond?
The bubbling foam is so elastic, from the disolved organics, that it resists the downward beating and preasure of the in coming water, exiting the void side of the Y which is the path of least resistance.
Is this whats going on?
Maybe this is the cure for the surface foaming of most TT.

Jim