utsuri
Koi Lover
Jul 13, 2006, 3:04 AM
Post #1 of 1
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Adding a protien skimmer to bakki showers
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This idea was inspired by Tao BKK. He had an idea to collect foam from the action inside the chambers of a bakki shower. This might also work well. It is an idea and not reality so it will take some playing with. Let me break it down for you guys willing to try it. I hope the diagrams are easy to read and understand.
This is the skimmer.
How it works. Water and air enters the bottom left. This should be set up so the current inside the skimmer rotates. Water only enters the skimmer from the top and rotates in the opposite direction. As the air rises through the water comming from the water intake (top left) protiens adhere to the bubbles. They rise to the top and form a foam. This foam rises and spills over the baffle plate (angled at the top). There it will settle back into water and will drain off (top right). The drain set at the bottom is the filters exit or product water. This drain needs a fairly accurate ball valve to control the water level in the skimmer. The water level is crucial. If it is too high you will get too much water in the discharge. If it is too low it will not remove enough. You know you have it right when the water is extremely discolored. Either Brown or green. Slighly cloudy and the discharge has too much water in it. The top of the skimmer should be open. This will further allow off gassing of nitrogen.
Now hooking this up to the bakki shower.
The water level here is exagerrated so we can see how this works. The "u" shaped tube at the top of the chamber is going to be used to draw in air with the water. Basically it is a stand pipe where the water flows out the side and not the bottom. The top of the pipe is open. This is where the water comes in. As water flows past this it draws in air. Kind of like a venturi but not really. This is a gravity feed. We need this to drop straight down. That will only further introduce more bubbles when it reaches the bottom. No valves here, we want the follow rate to be wide open on this to introduce lots of air to the water. The water only feed comes from the bottom of the shower chamber and should be set to draw water only to the skimmer. The size of these pipes is a big variable. I would set the water and air mixture pipe at 2 inches. The water only pipe around 1.25 inches. The output drain at the bottom of the skimmer should be 2 1/2 or 3 inches with a valve inline to control the water level.
The whole thing together looks like this.
Effectively you could introduce more air to the water by drawing from the top chamber with the water and air mixture feed. The more the water falls means more bubbles entering the tube. The water only feed should stay where it is at. You want that line full of water.
If this ever gets tried let me know how this works for you. I have done something like this in reef aquariums. It worked as good as any venturi I ever used. The only change with this idea is that the skimmer is not inline from the pond to the filter.
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