Prizim Skimmer that Works!!!

[Skimmerking]

want to sell it .

[canadawest]

Ahhh, I remember the first 12 months I had my tank running with a little Prizm skimmer and I thought it was the cats-meow.

Now that it has long since been replaced with a modified Red Sea Berlin Hang-on, that little Prizm just seems so useless.

Not a bad skimmer for smaller (50gal or less) tanks in factory configuration, but with that clever mod it might just keep up with slightly larger or higher organics tanks.

[martym]

I've got the prizm pro deluxe and love it. It out skimmed the Berlin XL that was in a sump. It is on a 75 gallon now( prizm).

[sumpfinfishe]

Hi Kyle, after reading about your mod upgrade to the Prizm skimmer a few days ago, I was interested to say the least. Not that I haven't been happy with my skimmer, but over the last year or so I have basically maxed out on my bio load. I was having concerns that my Prizm skimmer may not be able to keep up any longer-until after reading this post that is. I was having the same problems with flow also, as more load was added to the tank, I also wanted to turn up the skimmer above 65%, but if I did it would simply run wet due to the short collection tube.

So after Al (my roomie) cut a few pieces of pvc it wasn't long before he had the thing all glued together. Now, 36hrs later the new mod is working like a charm . I'm really happy with the increased flow as well the tube now has enough room to accomodate this increase.
Thanks for the great mod Kyle and to Al for building it for me
Here's a few pics too

your welcome....
glad it worked well for you, I found that the mod made it worth keeping
Ill have to post pics of the intake muffler, and the bubble trap.....

[sumpfinfishe]

Wow it must have been a flashback or something , I just realized that Tony had posted a reply to my question about this skimmer- what over two years ago

Tony Wrote:

Since our conversation I've been thinking about this skimmer some.

Realistically all my comsplaints can be traced back to one design shortcoming: the reaction chamber is too small.

What happens for me (and others) is that you need to crank back the water volume to something like "5% open" in order to prevent the air/water foam from rising too high in the collection cup and spilling over into the cup with perfectly clean water as skimmate.

But the problem for me is that the water flow is so cranked back that air can get into the U-tube, and breaks the siphon within a matter of 12 hours or so. A skimmer is no good if it shuts itself down, no matter how good that foam is.

Thus, there are two modifications I will suggest for anyone who has a Prism and isn't 100% happy with it.

The first is the easy one. Put an airline valve on the air intake. Turn up the water volume, and slowly increase the air until you get some foam. Just don't overdo the air, or else you'll overwhelm that little reaction chamber. Here is the key. You need a top-quality air valve. Those plastic cheapy jobs aren't going to give a fine enough adjustment. What will happen is suddenly they allow too much air in as you slowly open them ... and then the fine adjustments are defeated and the skimmer overwhelms itself.

The only thing I don't really like about this idea is that any time you allow more water through the skimmer, the higher the water column will rise into the reaction chamber, thus giving you less volume in that chamber for good foam production.

This leads me into my second idea (which I haven't tried yet, because I'm going to give idea #1 a solid week or two to see how well it plays out long-term).

The problem is the reaction tube is too small. So, why not extend the reaction tube? It would just be a matter of finding a tube of the appropriate diameter, and you can place this "riser extender" between the skimmer and the collection cup. Perhaps a length of gravel vacuum tubing would work (I haven't looked into this yet). If I try this then I'll post some pictures in the DIY forum. But this way we could have the water AND air fully open. I figure that so long as the tube is long enough the contact time should be long enough and give a really high density skimmate. It wouldn't look too pretty but then again function is more important than esthetics the way I see it

[Delphinus]

At first I was like ... who is this Tony character? .... Then I realized, hey wait, I DID write that. Wow, solid memory, Rich!

I never did try the riser extension thing (the air valve worked well enough for me at the time) but I'm glad that someone else did and that the idea has merit after all.

[NTidd]

The problem I have with the skimmer is cleaning the dang thing, is there a way to do this successfully? I would like to make this mod but I'm not quite sure where the bubble trap is? I think I'm missing it...

for cleaning the skimmer, I only take the top collection cup off and rinse it in the sink, then put it back on, I dont really clean anything else on it, Ill clean the intake tube every couple months...

I havent posted any pics of my bubble trap yet, I think I see that someone used some foam pieces in the output for bubble controll in the pics posted below mine

[sumpfinfishe]

That's right Kyle, two pieces of foam in the output really helps cut back on the tiny bubbles. However this is temporary until I can get a peek at your acrylic bubble trap design

Do you have any pics yet