What material use for mesh mod skimmer ?
 

I want to do a mesh mod for my protein skimmer but I am not sure what material to use ? Can I use Enlenet Nylon mesh PF4 or something softer or better than this ? And if I use mesh mod will it wear out the pump in the future ?

I think Enkamat was the specific type, I tried several other things in lieu of this including a red dish "scrubby" for pots and pans, gutterguard, some "critter guard" from work (like a 0.5mm mesh) and another type of enkamat. All of them sucked. The PF4 is definitely the one to get. I think there are a couple of people on here selling extra, maybe do a search for "enkamat"

As for the pump, I have no idea whether it actually wears on it or not. My pump has been running for probably close to 2 years with the enkamat on it (3-4 layers) without a problem. Only thing is that sometimes it wouldn't start up after a power outage, make sure you trim the enkamat well so it doesn't touch the sides of the impeller housing.

Thank you for your information Christyf5. I got PF4 at work and just want to double check if someone had experience with this kind of mesh mod before I ruin my impeller.

Well, you pretty much have to ruin your impeller by cutting some pins off to get the PF4 on there and have the pump re-start reliably, unfortunately.

hehehe ... if it is worth to ruin my impeller to make my skimmer work better I think I want to try it. Yes I am a little bit worried about how to restart the pump when it stops. Does it need to be unpluged and will it restart by itself or do I have to do something else to make it run ?

I had to blow air into my air intake to start the skimmer if it wouldn't restart. Which I think may have been avoided if I had cut down my mesh a little more. Other than that the mod was worth ruining the impeller for, my skimmer went from "so-so" to "wow."

After trimming mine properly, I have no issues restarting the pump.

i think that was the reason of the sicce pumps having problems starting up , and if I would have known that I wouldn't have spent 1300 on a skimmer :redface:

How do you secure the mesh to the impeller?
How many layers of mesh do you use?
Does anyone have any pictures of a completed impeller?

The mesh is secured with the really small zapstraps, theyr'e pretty thin maybe 1/4" or so and very short. I think there are either 2 or 4 holes in the impeller to work with.

I used either 3 or 4 layers of mesh. Its very important to trim the mesh so that it is just slightly smaller than the diameter of the impeller so it doesn't move against the impeller housing, this will cause problems when restarting the pump.

I think Tony has pics somewhere on here, he did a very thorough instructional post on how to do the mesh mod. I'll see if I can find it :biggrin: Here it is: http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...highlight=mesh

Oh and I didn't cut the pins off my needlewheel, I was too chicken :razz: I just slapped the enkamat on overtop of them, it actually worked quite nicely.