Becket Skimmer

[pocilipora]

Is a bigger pump always beter?

[titus]

Hello,

Not necessary but depends. For example a Quiet One wouldn't do the trick even though it's 1200gph because it's not pressure rated. A Dolphin SST 1200 is good even at the same 1200gph rating but is pressure rated. A Dolphin Ampmaster 3000gph pump doesn't produce any noticeable better results than the 1200.

Titus

[Doug]

As Titus said, bigger but pressure rated may be better. We had a long post on this topic, on RC. It had some pretty good experts involved.

I never changed from my Mag24, but most believed a Mak 4, would out perform it. Changes I did make were, raising the injector to the top of the skimmer and changing the injector input, from 3/4 inch to a 1 inch.

[titus]

Hello,

Ah Doug is right. I remembered when I made my new sump, I offsetted the Beckett to the other end of the sump, a few feet away from the skimmer. I used a 3/4" pipe but no bubbles were produced, until I swapped it for a 1" or 1-1/4" pipe. Can't remember. Gave my setup away. lol.

Anyway, if you design and build skimmers, you'd notice that the relative location of the injector is quite important as well. This is because the Beckett can't take much back pressure itself.

Titus

[DJ88]

I tried running my bullet on an ampmaster3000 all on it's own. They aren't pressure rated and push 3000GPH plus. My MAK4 pushing 1100 GPH but is pressure rated runs the skimmer better.

With any pumps on a beckett skimmer you will notice a point where going up to a higher GPH pump doesn't make a drastic difference in bubbles produced.

The general consensus is that the Iwaki's(55 or 70) and the MAK 4 do the best job with a beckett skimmer. The pressure rating ensures a much higher water flow through the beckett at a higher speed pulling more air into the beckett to be mixed and chopped into bubbles.

I have also raised up the beckett on my bullet and it did make a difference in foam production. As well as increasing the diameter of the dia of the injector input to a 1".

My skimmer runs as a constant milk white out in the riser column. If I had known you were curious about this I would have shown you. I think I had the skimmer hidden behind a screen.

Here's that thread Doug was talking about.

pump talk. (http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101418&perpage=25&pagenumber=1)

[ 06 September 2002, 15:20: Message edited by: DJ88 ]

[pocilipora]

Thanks guys, I think Ill stick with my Little Giant 5MD instead of the Mag18 I was contemplating on using.