Protein Skimmers

[M-pire]

I have a few questions...

First, I have the CPR Bak-Pak and it works great...but what makes it so much better than others (this is my first skimmer)?

What makes a skimmer good or bad?

Why are most skimmers made out of a cylinder?

Is it the flow rate that determines how large of a tank a skimmer can handle? If so how many gph per gallon do they suggest?

What makes the Aqua C so drastically better than others...and what makes it more expensive?

Thanks!

 

[BrianH]

If we all knew the answers to these questions we would all make ourselves the best skimmers.
Mabye this article proteinskimmer.com on the aqua C website will answer a few of your questions.

Brian

 

[mogurnda]

As far as I can tell, a good skimmer requires very little fiddling to get good skimmate consistently. The Remora and bakpak are nicely designed to do that.

If you can get hold of Volume 1 of Sprung and Delbeek's The Reef Aquarium, they go into great detail about what makes a skimmer work well. A balance of flow rate, bubbles of the right size and quantity, and contact time between bubbles and water.

Like Brian, if I understood it better, I'd be making them.

 

[M-pire]

Great article! I guess we are paying for their knowledge of the matter.

Thank you!

 

[Alastair]

If you want a fairly hardcore mathmatical approach to skimmer theory, check out P.R. Escobal's "Aquatic Systems Engineering" from Dimension Engineering Press. A little biased in some cases (he owns a company that makes filtration equipment, and when he recommends a product, take it with a grain of salt as it's usually the one made by his company ) but a very worthwhile read nonetheless. The only thing I don't like so much about his section on skimmers is that he often talks about what he terms the most "efficient" skimmer design, which so far as I can tell means to him the most skimmate that can be removed per unit volume of air from a given volume of water, or to put it another way, the most protein per bubble. That, as discussed briefly in the article from aqua C posted by Brian, does not neccessarily make the best skimmer for an aquarium application. But the discussions of how and why a skimmer works are good.