Reef Octo LX1000s HOB Arrival and It's BIG

I wanted to give an update with the micro bubble situation. Frankly, there are none. The skimmer is designed very well and simply, it's almost impossible for micro bubbles to make it to the display.

The reaction chamber that the bubbles are created in, and forced up through is very high. At the same time, the actual opening through the bottom of the rear box is so small, that they just cant make their way through really. 99.7% of the bubbles remain in the reaction chamber portion, while clean water makes it's way under the baffle and up towards the tank. At that point whatever bubbles might make their way up, or are created during the small splash from the skimmer into the water, will then need to fight with yet another baffle and finally the blue sponge. I'm very impressed with it in that regard, well thought out indeed.

Here's some more pics of what I'm talking about.

 

thats awesome!!!!

 

I 2nd that! That is great that they thought about micro-bubbles with this HOB.

Love the diagrams and specs crank! 8)

 

any pics of the end product ( the dirty stuff) ???

 

check if the pump is on one of the side walls if it is put some filter sponge in there and it should quiet it down some

 

Unfortunately, not yet. It's only been running now for barely 24 hours so still breaking in, that and I'm still trying to figure out the correct position for good results. It ran over night lastnight and I thought I had the cup positioned well for the break in period. This morning it was half full of lemon juice. I emptied the cup, reset it, and let it run while at work. When I came home there was already a nice bit of green tea sitting in the bottom of the cup, but still running a bit wet. I dosed a bit of amino acids tonight and the thing went into crazy mode with large wet bubbles coming up the riser tube with vengeance and overflowing in the cup. It's just now beginning to settle down.

Honestly, I'm expecting these kind of wild results for another week or two until every things settles down and equalizes. Until then, I'm constantly watching, experimenting and adjusting.. fun stuff ;D

 

Thanks for the suggestion, Newreef.

There's clearance around the entire pump and the walls of the box, not much but it's there. I managed to figure out a big part of the humming vibrating sound. Turns out the curved floating top plate that sits over the in-tank portion of the box shouldn't sit and float. It needs to be wedged between the front clear piece of acrylic and under a rubber stopper on the back wall, of which until now I couldn't figure out what it was for. That fixed 85% of the noise from the skimmer. Now all I hear is sucking from the silencer mixed with a slight hum from the pump. Nothing bad at all but I'm going to give the pump a good 2 weeks to slime over, break in and hopefully quite down before I begin to worry about it.

 

Well I just figured out the remaining 15% of my noise issue. The silencer just needed a bit of cotton put in the container. 100% better... The last bit of humming is still coming from that cover. I think it needs to be sanded a bit, and muffled on the edges that that touch the skimmer body. Not sure with what yet, I'll do some experimenting this weekend. However when I take the cover off completely, all the humming sounds seem to go away. At least we get it isolated. The last step is to put a tiny piece of acrylic on an angle under the output hole. The drop is juuuust a bit too steep and causes a slight trickle.. I think with the above mods, this skimmer will be completely silent.

Updates to come..

 

Okay, so it's been a few days and thought I would give an update. The skimmer is beginning to settle down and pull out some nice gunk. I'm still running it a bit wet, and it still likes to go a bit haywire when I put my hand in the tank for maintenance or something, but that is settling down quite a bit as well. Hopefully in another week everything is stabilized.

Here's a quick pic of some skimmate, this was after 16 hours or so,





Also, here's some tank shots.

No flash:




flash:


bit of a distance shot:

 

So as you can see the skimmer is loud and really draws your attention away from anything in else in the tank. With that said, I stared my second mod on the skimmer to tone it down a bit. The plan is to skin it with some .060 black acrylic and silicone. I didn't want to do anything permanent just in case. I figure if I really need to I can always remove the panels and peel away the silicone. I thought about tacking some Weldon in the corners, but am kind of leaning against that idea as the acrylic won't need to hold any weight. Here's my progress so far:

Running material total: $20