reef

No need to live in auckland, ring ben at jansens and he will post it to you.

This tank is skimless http://www.korallenriff.de/mark_re_fische.html You can go skimless however only if you gain more experiance. Skimming is important especially if you are just getting into marines. Ring jansens as they got some real cheap skimmers. Queen skimmers for $20. even better get the air drive skimmers. so cheap al at give away prices.

Its not at cost, well below. basically giving the stuff away,

They are selling items that they wont be selling again as they are not big sellers. They also are clearing all the seachem test kits. i got a few at $7 reduced from $50. i got modern reef aquarium vol 4 for $20 odd, was selling at $160.

Jansens got some real cheap skimmers on special. i just got a aquamedic air drive skimmers for $40. Ok for small tank, air driven skimmers using a airstone , they produce very small bubbles so you will get good skimming out of it. for $40 you cant go wrong as they were reduced from $350.

what fludised filter are you using. should not be cloudy after 5 days.

Get a hang on skimmer then you wont need a sump. I have a ar980 with no sump.

ring a retail store. aim for about 3 times your tank volume.

All you need is a laguna, never has a problem with mine and well made.

Dont understand the question arthur daley, this is a protein skimmer thread arthur. Whats the flow rate of aquacenta

Dont understand the question arthur daley

that would happen as the air/water ratio is out, you cant just put additional air into a pump as the water flow has to increase as well, So too much air will also increase bubble size. Height does prevent additional air being sucked into a skimmer. so to overcome this you need a bigger pump. will post photos when i can find them, but there is a few on the net. smaller the better.

Thats great. My tank with the queen skimmer also looks well skimmed.

The aquamedic tall skimmers are badly designed as they are too tall so you get less air into the skimmer, The taller the skimmer the less air is drawn into it, Bubbles size is very large so you dont get effecient skimming. That is why deltec have short skimmers and large reaction tube. so they end up costing lots more as large tubes are expensive.

Before you can decide on a pump you need to work out the volume of your tank.

Be lucky to do 2000L tank air intake is very low and bubble size is very large. ?? i am not looking to downgrade my skimmer yet.

In contains zeovit and natural seawater, my tank has never looked better.

Maybe R&B can share his design as he was building one 8 months ago, Where are the pics??

you also have some of the funny blue tangs, i just noticed that some have the black line starting from the eye and some from the mouth.

Just to clarify pies, you are using a iwaki 100 which does about 8400lph at zero head. so at the moment the pump is running with the ball valve fully open.?? In the photo of your iwaki the ball valve is closed a little???

I think what is happening is that the skimmer is quite high up so it is feeding quite quick and siphoning the water much quicker than pumping water into it, So to get the best out of the skimmer I would reduce the water going into it so that the water stays in the skimmer much longer so that you get better contact time.

i dont think that is the issue as it looks like pies has a bypass pipe on his return. He wants to remove more waste.

No because you lose the air to water ratio. The ap902 sucks in 1200lph of air, vs 3000lph water flow. So that is a ratio of .4 vs .24 with 5000lph of throughput, So you are losing the efficiency of the skimmer if you put more water in it. That is why when you get a new skimmer it will skim heaps in the first couple of weeks and then slows down as there is less organics to remove. so if you want to skim more you will need a bigger skimmer or maybe get another so you can run both.

If you say so then the skimmer is not working correctly, 3000lph is the correct flow rate. if you put more water in it then it skims less as the contact time is reduce greatly so the water leaving the skimmer is not as clean.

The water going through the skimmer will not be 5000L it is not possable, i run a ap1004 witha 3000lph pump and the valve is almost fully open, the longer the water in the skimmer the more contact time, so if you put in 2500lph it is going to skim much better than 5000l a lph going in. However if you could attached another needle pump to the skimmer then 5000lph going in would skim as good as 2500lph .