wood air stone skimmers

[mike31154]

Mmmmm, wooden air stone, yesss. Thanks for the referral Bill.

I have what I think is a DIY air driven skimmer that came with the used system I purchased when I got into the hobby. After a lot of research and a few of my own mods, I have the thing working very nicely and I love how quiet it is with a small AquaClear 301 powerhead pushing water and a larger air pump (thanks to Bill) making the bubbles through DIY wooden air diffuser. It's not as tall as yours Josie, at just around 2.5 ft.

I tried a Remora C Pro HOB with a mag 3 pump for a few months but all it did is make a lot of noise and very mild tea, nothing like the thick sludge I scrape out of the collection cup on the old air driven job. Thankfully I ended up cracking the thing while trying to lift it off for cleaning one day. This forced me to put the old school technolgy back into service and I haven't looked back.

What's really improved the performance of mine aside from the larger air pump is the DIY air diffuser. I purchased a plank of basswood from a local lumber supplier and started making my own using Gorilla Glue. In fact I'm in the process of building one today. The problem with the store bought wooden air diffusers is the circular hole drilled into a square/rectangular piece of wood. This shortens the life since there's only a small area for the bubbles to push through the wood (at the narrowest part). This area wears/clogs quickly and that's the end of it. My DIY diffuser is a box with flat panels, allowing a much larger surface area to produce bubbles. I have yet to see any other technology (read new) produce bubbles as fine as a newly installed wooden air diffuser. If not mistaken there are several suppliers out there supplying similar 'box' type wooden air diffusers, I even saw a patent out on one. No longer have the links though and they weren't cheap either. Another reason I started making my own is that none of my LFS here were regularly stocking wooden diffusers.

A future build with basement sump will definitely use a larger version of what I have now. A few pics follow.

This pic is a year or so old and features the much smaller air pump & two store bought diffusers on a manifold. It had just been cleaned too, so not much gunk in the top. With the new pump and DIY diffuser there's no way you can see thru the tube as in this photo, it's fully saturated with fine bubbles. It's HOB since I don't have a sump, but I actually have it sitting on its own little stand attached to the display stand. Didn't like having the thing hanging on the rim.


This is the AquaClear pump in the pre skimmer box with the return pipe in behind.


A closer shot of the collection cup (still the old air pump) showing a little more 'stuff'. I skim dry so the 2L pop bottle that collects liquid skimmate takes months to fill, but I regularly scrape some very thick sludge off the collection cup & upper reaction tube sides.


I might try to make a bubble diffuser plate too, but not quite sure how I'm going to fit that in with the rigid air tube going down and all. Could be a maintenance nightmare when it comes time to change the air diffuser and not sure of the benefit to effort ratio at this point. Another thing I'd like to try is use John Guest type fittings like we have on our RO systems to replace the current air tubing. They're watertight so they should be airtight and would make assembly/disassembly a lot easier.