New Skimmer from Myreefcreations is Kicking Butt!

[MartyD]

Last night I hooked my my MR2 skimmer that I bought from Andy at Myreefcreations.com. I took this pic after 12 hours. It is already kicking butt. His workmanship is top notch.

Regards.

Marty

[Joaco]

Hi Marty,
I have a MR-3 with double Beckett injectors. It's the same skimmer you bought, but with a taller rising tube and with one more Beckett.
I can give you some tips to improve performance on yours (they are awesome, but yes, they can work even better)

First:
I can see in the pic that your Beckett chamber is flooded. Shouldn't be so. If you look close, the water level is as high as the venturi intakes, this is simply so because there the water gets sucked back into the Beckett.
Check out this diagram:


Beckett injector diagram

The red arrows show the air intake of the Beckett. If yours is sucking in water (flooded chamber), performance will not be optimal.

You might have a leak somewhere between the Beckett injector and the PVC fittings. Look close and you will see drops coming out somewhere. You can resolve it with more Teflon tape(it already comes with it, but you might need to ajust it), that will give you a better seal.

Second:
you will have more water volume exposed to the fine bubble produced by the Beckett, if you rise the waterlevel in the skimmer. More air/water contact time, and the fine air bubbles will have a better chance to get stable to produce thicker foam in the rising tube.

Third:
you will get MUCH better results by rising the Beckett chamber above the water level in the skimmer.
Check this out:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-03/fm/index.htm

Beckett heads are designed for use in an end-terminal application. As described above, Beckett valves were designed to sit on the end of a PVC pipe and have water forced through them like a fountain. These valves do not withstand the backpressure of being under water, and consequently, for the most efficient air intake, there should not be any backpressure on the outflow of the head. This also provides an indication as to how we can best utilize the Beckett to maximize air intake. Maximum air intake and performance can be obtained by placing the air intakes of the Beckett head at a level which is higher than the water level in the skimmer. Elevating the Beckett head on a small piece of PVC will often achieve this result.

I did it on my MR-3, I will show you pics. (I already e-mailed Andy about it)
I will be back in 5 minutes.

Joaco

[Joaco]

you will get MUCH better results by rising the Beckett chamber above the water level in the skimmer.
Check this out:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-03/fm/index.htm

See how the Aerofoamer is built and uses that:

http://www.reefconcepts.com/

Aerofoamer 830:



Aerofoamer 848:



The Bullet skimmers too:

http://www.precisionmarine.com

And even the HSA (High Speed Aereation) :

http://www.marinetechnical.com/

HSA 1000:



Joaco

[Joaco]

you will get MUCH better results by rising the Beckett chamber above the water level in the skimmer.
Check this out:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-03/fm/index.htm


I did it on my MR-3, I will show you pics. (I already e-mailed Andy about it)

Here go the pics of the before and after rising the Beckett:

Before:



After:



Note that it's only using one of the Becketts (I bought two). The dirty rising tube on the second pic is how it looked like after I returned from a 2 week trip to Germany. You can see the skimmate level, the rest was overflowing to the canister you see on the pic, emptied by a friend while I was out. You should NOT let your skimmer accumulate this dirty buidlup in the skimmer's neck, it WILL affect performance (affects the foam rising). Weekly (at least) or bi-weekly cleanings will be needed for best skimming results.

Joaco

[Joaco]

Check out this pic again:



I have my skimmer rising tube waterlevel one inch below from where the collection cup starts. Not only was the Beckett working against backpressure, but I had small floods everytime I turned off the pump (Ampmaster 3000) to empty the skimmer for maintenance.
How? since the watercolumn in the skimmer was higher than the Beckett, when I turned the pump off, the backpressure caused water to come out of the air intake valve of the Beckett chamber.
Not a major mess, but I had to remove the whole chamber to empty it from water (flooded as yours in your pic above), and the cotton piece inside the silencer got wet, affecting air intake performance when I started the skimmer after cleaning it.

About the needle valve in the air intake: I got best results (smallest bubbles, bubble stability in the rising tube & more foam production) when the valve was closed almost all the way down.

I love this skimmer. I just hooked up the second Beckett to it.
I also bought a CR-2 calcium reactor from Andy. Both skimmer & reactor are very professional build, I was really impressed when I received them.

Joaco

[Joaco]

Not a major mess, but I had to remove the whole chamber to empty it from water (flooded as yours in your pic above), and the cotton piece inside the silencer got wet, affecting air intake performance when I started the skimmer after cleaning it.

The cotton piece in the silencer at the entry of the needle valve works awesome as airfilter too. You wouln't believe how dirty the cotton gets in one month! (don't forget to replace it)
If it wasn't for that filter, all that dirt from the air would be injected into the tank water.
And if it wasn't for the silencer, the air sucking noise would be really annoying. Thumbs up for that too!

Joaco

[Joaco]

The Bullet skimmers too:

http://www.precisionmarine.com

For some reason I can't open their webpage to show you how they rised the Beckett in the Bullet skimmers now, but here goes a pic of how they sold them before:



Joaco

[Joaco]

I can see in the pic that your Beckett chamber is flooded. Shouldn't be so. If you look close, the water level is as high as the venturi intakes, this is simply so because there the water gets sucked back into the Beckett.
Check out this diagram:


Beckett injector diagram

The red arrows show the air intake of the Beckett. If yours is sucking in water (flooded chamber), performance will not be optimal.

I'm attaching the diagram.