Drooooooool

Drooooool x10! Love it!

Now thats what i call a skimmer, good job

I love the float switch system that is a real neat but so simple feature.

Nice skimmer but I am afraid to find out what that would cost.

Just a thought, wouldn’t having a double bubble plate put more back pressure on the pump?

Thanks

Sure, everything, including longer pipe on the pump, or an equal area yet smaller diameter (more holes) puts more back pressure on a pump. On the other hand, the ‘continuous cone + neck’ will also lower the water level a bit.

I came up with the ‘continuous cone & neck concept back in 2008 and submitted it to ATB. The main idea was to allow for more ‘adjustability’ in the water level for the varying bioload in a system. On my XL for instance, the neck could start out as 8″ in diameter, but shrink to 6″ at the top. The existing neck diameter is a cylinder of about 7″ right now… going to the ‘cone’ neck would allow about 2-3 inches to be taken off my skimmer’s overall height while keeping a nice transition. This way, if I run the skimmer on a system that cant keep up with a foam head that fills 8″ or7″ in diameter, I can just adjust the neck level a little. On the other hand, I have also reduced the overall water height in the skimmer, so less back pressure on the pump. In short… more air, less turbulence (due to double plate), more adjustability; no more collapsing foam heads because the amount of fish and corals in your tank cant produce enough waste to keep an 8″ cylinder filled. Just raise the water level a little bit, and now you only need enough to keep a 6″ diameter filled. That may not seem like much, but if you compare the areas, thats an adjustment range of almost 44% right there.

The double bubble plate might add a small amount of back pressure. Sure. But the resulting reduction in turbulence more than makes up for it.

Hey Victor & Anton: Love the threaded venturi… took you long enough!!

It just gets harder and harder to decide what skimmer I am going to use!

This looks awesome!

@Jon

That make sense. Yes I have to agree with a reduction in turbulence with double bubble plate but I am confussed as heck. You have the latest report on skimming in the Advanced Aquarist Magazine which says turbulence ,shape of skimmer(cone) and other factors don’t make a difference in TOC removal. Its got me up in arms and many others around here as well.
Now don’t get me wrong I think this skimmer is one of the best out there and the best in customer service. Absolutely brilliant.
Here is the report.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/1/aafeature

Jon you are quick to point out the flaws of other skimmers and even quicker to hurtle praise at ATB; you are such a fanboy, not that there is a problem with that but it’s obvious.

The thermo-formed plastic body on this skimmer will be as brittle as the Alpha Kone’s, it will take some expert foam packing to keep it from being broken in shipping.

Like the A-Kone, that wedge pipe is woefully inadequate for fine tuned regulation of the water level and that float valve is gonna get gunked up with skimmate mighty quick. It’ll take regular cleaning to keep the float valve in working order.

The float switch is a excellent feature, I did it diy on my current skimmer.

on the other hand I don’t really like the extending cone neck’ because this will make cleaning the neck more difficult without totally removing the neck.

Jake,

Our bodies are not thermo-formed. they are injection molded from pmma

thanks for the clarification Victor. Hope the injectin molded plastic is stronger the heat-formed plastic bodies of some other skimmers.

Well, to be fair Jake, if you had helped & contributed to the design of something, and the suggestions were used, I would think you would be pretty positive about the product as well. So you may see it as being a ‘fanboy’, but you are just stating something that is reflexive and relative in the first place. Im sure you feel Reefbuilders is one of, if not the best internet reef sites around, right? ATB isnt the only company I have been openly positive about though (CoralVue & I-tech come to mind). Also, you forget there are some things that I have been openly critical of as well… like the ‘wedge pipe’ you mention. Telescoping standpipes all the way! Lol. Luckily its easy enough to add a telescoping standpipe to any of these skimmers anyways.

I wouldnt bother with a float switch myself… or even a large collection cup I suppose… thats what the drain line is for (at least for me). I dont know much about the float switch, but I would guess that some might be interested in how it is set up.

As for the plastic… saying that thermoformed plastics are always going to be brittle is a false assumption. I dont know how much background you have with polymers, but this tends to only be true with Acrylics and Polycarbonates. The elasticity of a polymer really depends on too much to mention here, but it mostly depends on the cross-linking of the polymer strands (was it polymerized with… heat, chemicals, etc, as well as crystal formations). If its a polymer with a low amount of cross linking and the glass transition temp is not reached in the forming process (hot enough to form, but not enough to change its structure), the material retains its elasticity. Polymers with more cross linking tend to be less adaptable when formed with heat (Thermosets, with lots of cross linking, dont bend with heat at all)… they need additional chemicals. OTOH, some thermoplastics can be thermoformed repeatedly with no loss in durability. FWIW, ‘silly putty’ and several other elastomers are really polymers (as much as the ‘rubber industry’ likes to distance itself from other plastics… it still is), and those can withstand a good kick, and those are plastics. Hey… there is an idea… a semi-hard injected silicone skimmer body. You can kick it, you can drop it, you can even crumple it up and stick it in a small box… but when left out, it pops up into a skimmer. No need for o-rings when the whole thing is rubber!!!

big downside with this skimmer is that you cant fit a self cleaning head