Gravity Fed Protein skimmer

55 gallon display falls 3' in to berlin type skimmer, the drain pulls air with it. I only have fresh water in the tank now, I want to know if this will work before I start the system.

I want to keep my power usage to a minium, is this a common way, or has this been done before? There must be some fundimental reason why this isn't used.

 

You will need to push about 4x55 GPH through the skimmer .. And I'd doubt that you will ? I had a smart guy here in Ct to argue this with me on his set up. A DelTec Ohuooo and he was a engineer who said it would be fine on his 180 LOL well he found out that he had to push 4x180 or abouts to get the desired effects he added a pump . So in your case 220 to 300 GPH is easier to achieve then 720 to 800 GPH you may be able to ? But saltwater will not flow as fast as F/W .. But if you can get 300 GPH through what you have now with F/W you may be good to go ?

 

There are some pics around here of my old 40 breeder from 1992. That had gravity-fed air stone skimmers that were 6" wide by 24" high. They were fed by drains in the overflow and returned into the sump - flow/height controlled by ball valves. Once I automated the level in the sump (handled evap) with a float switch, they worked amazingly well.

How are you feeding air? I imagine if you use nice air pumps and limewood air-stones it could work well.

 

My display is fed from my sump, The pump is rated 900 GPH, after it raises 4' the GPH is about 500. SO if 500GPH is entering the tank, 500GPH has to be leaving the tank.

Before I connected the drain to the skimmer, the drain made foam is the sump. I think it should make that foam in the skimmer now

Two options for adding air, directly to skimmer, or airline down the drain

Thanks for the tips, keep them coming