Hello to all the TRT folks. I haven't been on here in quite a while, and thought i would share what i have been up to. Back in November of last year i brought home a 220 Perfecto RR tank. Upon deciding on equipment the cost of the skimmer i would need for what i had planned was a bit on the steep side. So i decided to build my own. Here are the pictures of the build and test. The first pic is the base box, it is 20" square and 6" tall.
This is the main body being glued up. Even though it wasn't easy i decided to make the transition from the body to the neck out of flat stock also.
Here are the base and body getting ready to be joined. Also you can see the bubble chamber. I made the bubble chamber so that it would just barely slip through the opening where the neck attaches.
While the body and base were drying i started building the neck and collection cup. I was going to make it square, but since the transition area came out so well i thought why not get fancy with the cup! It is basically shaped like a stop sign with all sides having to be beveled to maximize glueing surface. Here is the result, the cup is 12" across with a neck height of 11" AOL with 7.5" between transition and cup.
Here is the skimmer stacked up in the shop.
And here is the skimmer being readied for a wet test with the Orca pump in place.
Here is a full shot of the assembled skimmer on its stand over my 110 gal sump to give an idea of size. The skimmer is a shade over 46" tall from base to lid.
This is its first run with salt water.
Here is the foam it produced when i added some dry Marco Rocks. The cup does not accumulate skimmate because i put the drain line flush with the bottom of the cup.
If anybody has any questions please feel free to ask. The skimmer has been running for about 2 months and was producing a foam head less than 2 hours after i plugged it in. It is running on a 430 gallon system. One side note, it holds 28 gallons of water when running!
