DIY Skimmer

I pee'd in the humidifier once.

 

Wow, that was random

 

lol! I think that was for the LR bin comment...

I'm a big DIY'er too... I just find that i enjoy building stuff and that's part of the hobby for me. I was planning on making a DIY skimmer, but can't decide which method is the best for achieving the smallest bubbles. I saw that 5g jug one on RC, it's cool, but by no means does it look professional

 

If you took the total volume of water that a store bought model has in the reaction aera and divided it by the gallons of recomendation then you could get an idea on how big your model needs to be. (if you base yours off there design)

 

So brilliant in its simplicity! Kudos and karma to you, Woods.

A square foot of water is 7.5 gallons. Remember that.

Reaction area is measured in inches. Go to an LFS and measure a skimmer's chamber top to bottom, then left to right. Take half the LR dimension and square it. Multiply that by 3.14156. Take the result and multiply it by the height of the chamber. That's the area in square inches. Divide that by 12, and you get the square footage of your protein skimmer. Divide that number by the gallon tank recommendation on the skimmer's label to get your "multiplier."

Whatever size your tank, multiply that by your multiplier from above, and that will give you the cubic inch area of the skimmer you need to build.

You can calculate the height and width using algebra. Or post your multiplier here and we'll help.

Nuthin' like a little math to up the ante.

 

I was going to try to build one myself but Couldn't find acrylic cheep enough. I wish I could find cheep clear plastic. Any Ideas?

 

Sheet acrylic is cheap enough, but it's the cylinder that's particularly spendy. I think it's called open cell acrylic that you'd want to purchase if you choose to build one. I like the 5 gallon water jug idea alot, the difficult task of fashioning some type of cone for the neck is already done.

 

So if tube acrylic is so spendy then how can manufactures afford to buy it for there products. When I priced a tube out from my glass co. they said it was going to be 3 to 4 hundred for a tube that was only a foot long. I thought they were crazy but that was there quote. I wouldn't mind spending 50 but 300!!!! crazy.
Sorry for trampling on this post but thought this might be important for someone trying to build a skimmer.

 

Really?! Bwahahahaha! I like this one!

*edit*
The visual I had in my head... btw did it help.. the air

 

lol...