Moding an air driven skimmer????

[no_bs]

Has any one ever heard of mods done to an air driven skimmer. I have an old sea clear skimmer on a 100g, does a execlent job. But want more performance.

[BlueAbyss]

You could probably mod with a needle wheel pump or something... Is the skimmer external, HOB, or in sump?

[no_bs]

This is an external skimmer. Air stone driven.

[mike31154]

How many air stones? If you could add one or two that would help performance quite a bit. My skimmer came with the used set up I purchased a couple of years ago and I'm quite content with it's performance. I did a couple of mods to the original config. It came with two air stones and I didn't add any, but changed the t-fitting hookup into a small acrylic manifold. I've seen photos elsewhere of an air stone manifold made from a pvc end cap. Drill it, tap it and then you can attach multiple air stones to it. Can probably glue the fittings as well if you don't have tap & die handy. Here are a couple of shots of mine. I added a t-fitting at the output to enable easier draining if required, also a ball valve to control water column height as well as a slip union to allow easy adjustment of the output pipe length. It is an HOB DIY design but I built a separate stand because I didn't like the weight of it on the rim of my tank. There's an AquaClear 301 ph in a pre skimmer box pushing the water (8 watts) and a Stellar W60 air pump for bubble production (3.2 watts)

[fkshiu]

Replacing the wooden airstones on a regular basis and switching to a more powerful pump would help. Air driven skimmers are really hard on the air pumps as wooden airstones causes a lot of back pressure. Regular servicing and replacement of both the stones and the pump is a must. Getting a flow meter of some sort to monitor air flow would be helpful in this regard.