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Old 05-21-2009, 04:49 AM
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StirCrazy StirCrazy is offline
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how are you thinking of doing your neck and colection cup?

I am not sure about the pump you are using as I have no experiance with it, but it might be a better idea to use it as a recirulating skimmer pump, so all that pump would do is take water from the skimmer and reinject it back in mixed with air. then you could use a controlable supply to feed tank water to the skimmer. I know this means using two pumps but it is a much more efficient way of doing it as I think the turn over would be so fast on that water volume with just the one pump you would have to have a rather large skimmer to get any sort of contact time at all.

as for a square skimmer, there are several home made ones I have seen that are square. it should work fine, not as good as round but if you do a recirulating set up like I said it should be ok, just a little harder to clean. personaly I would go 5 or 6" wide and say 12" tall for the main body, then do a 2" wide neck about 4" tall with 1" of it extending into your colection cup. for the colection cup I would go back to the 6" width and say 4" tall.

now I wouold have a inlet from the second pump enter the bottom and the outlet back to the tank on the oposit side with a baffel to keep bubbles from going right out. have this exit with a bulkhead into a 90 going up. then have a pvc tube (say 1" for the outlet) going up with a "T" mounted so you can go up more or out the side. then come out the side with a short chunk into a 90 pointing down and then another chunk of tube extending under the water line. then on the branch going up just put a 6" chunk. this will allow air to escape and prevent syphoning. and to adjust the water level all you have to do is change the position of the "T" up or down. this could be done by using a 1" repair coupling which will give you about 6" of adjust ment for fine tuning.

anyways if you need more clairafacation on anything let me know this was just a quick ramble off the top of my head.

almost forgot.. you only want about 50gph of tank water going to that as a max flow rate so the second pump can be small. this low flow rate combined with a recirulating type skimmer pump will give you plenty of contact time in a skimmer this size.

Steve
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