kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[kien]

I recently went to Mexico for a week long trip and had my sister tank sit for me. She's done it before and is generally pretty good about looking after things but she's no "Advanced Aquarist". I didn't want her to have to monkey about with the tank too much so I took some steps to make her life a little easier.

1. I had a 33g rubbermade tote full of RO/DI water as a top off reservoir which is good for nearly two weeks of top off water. My usual reservoir which fits under the tank is only 8 gallons, good for about 2 or 3 days.

2. I set up an automatic fish feeder to feed the fish once in the morning and once at night. By the way, what a great little device! I got the Eheim one. I like it so much I use it almost full time now. It plops food in in the morning only though as I still like to hand feed (my fish mush and PE mysis) for the evening feed.

3. Lastly I decided to modify the skimmer to collect a week or mores worth of skimmate. In the past I just turned the skimmer off. However, this time around I wanted to keep it on but I didn't want my sister to have to empty the skimmer cup every few days or so. The cup does fill up pretty quick. Well, it doesn't actually fill up, but it fills enough (about half way) to a point where the foam itself has no room and starts to bubble over. Anyway, here's what I came up with.

I used one of these elbows and simply chopped off one end like so.



I then drilled a hole into the base of the skimmer's collection cup the size of the chopped off end, like so.





I then silliconed the elbow into the collection cup.







Then I stuck an appropriate sized hoze into the nozzel.



And voila!



At some point I'm going to put a valve inline there. This has worked out well and I have not touched the skimmate collection since before I left. I do dump some fresh water into the cup to rinse it a bit though. I will probably be using this full time even though it was only meant to be temporary.



Also, I think I can use a slightly smaller bottle, like a 2 litre soda bottle would be fine, instead of that gallon monster I have on there now

[Delphinus]

Haha, I totally did the opposite with my bubble magus skimmer. I took off the drain line and capped the hole. The reason being is that, while this is a great idea and is good for the reasons you outlined .. there is also now nothing to stop the skimmer from overflowing your sump empty should a snail or something get wedged into the skimmer's output.

Now it used to be pretty common to use a waste collector instead of a bottle on beckett skimmers but you don't see them used on needlewheel skimmers. The reason being though is that the cup is not sealed like they are on becketts (usually flanged and bolted, with a gasket) so that air can't escape except via the drain line. When the drain line closes (usually by a pingpong ball float in the waste collector) then the skimmer can't produce foam anymore because of the back pressure. This was one neat feature with beckett skimmers that seems to be lost with the current gen needlewheels.

Anyhow it's just something to watch out for.

I think what some people are doing nowadays is just putting a drain line on their collection bottles or buckets so that if the bottles overfills it just drains back to the tank. Yeah, gross to dump skimmate back in the tank but it beats an empty sump and a wet floor (it would get skimmed out again pretty quick after you fix the issue anyhow).

[kien]

Whoa! That is a very good point! Never thought about a snail ever getting into the outlet of the skimmer as the outlet is pretty darn big.

I just went to inspect my skimmer and I have a sock tied to the outlet to cut down on bubbles :-) So I think I'm safe? Anywhere else a snail could get in?

[shrimpchips]

You can also keep the bottle in your sump, so on the off chance it does overflow, it just does so back into the sump.

[mseepman]

Originally Posted by shrimpchips

You can also keep the bottle in your sump, so on the off chance it does overflow, it just does so back into the sump.

Haha...very good and obvious suggestion that never dawned on me.

[kien]

Ya, I was thinking about that as an option. Need to figure out how to weigh the bottle down so that it can sit in the sump water.. Although, I'm still having a hard time figuring out where else a snail could get into the skimmer's outlet since I have mine covered by a splash/bubble guard socky thing.

[Delphinus]

Well, snail is only one potential scenario. There may be others that I just can't dream up right now. I have no experience with your model of skimmer but the needlewheels I've played around with before, some have been worse than others for the occasional berserkness that causes them to overflow. The Bubble Magus is for some reason one of the worst this way for me, but I had a CSS65 on a 20g before that was just as bad and had I run that thing as hang-on as it was intended I would have emptied the sump several times. I don't know what the cause is whether it's something in the livestock taking a mondo poop or maybe a snail spawn or who knows, but it's something. But I had other skimmers that didn't do that (ASM) so .. yeah, who knows.

Instead of weighing down the bottle so it sits under the water level, you could just make a little eggcrate or acrylic (or glass) shelf that the bottle could sit on. The bottle needn't sit in the sump per se, it just needs to overflow into the sump.

It's sort of a balancing act though, if you have to tip your bottle sideways to maneuver it out of the sump then you might still be better off having it sit on the outside of the sump on a little shelf and just with a little hose that drains back to the sump.