Sea Clone Mods.

[danny zubot]

In my Rookie days I bought a sea clone skimmer, before I knew that they weren't very good skimmers. I have read many modifications that you can do to improve the effectiveness of this skimmer but nothing really worked. I was at my last straw with it on Friday and ready to chuck it when I decided to try one last thing.

I bought a piece of acrylic air line tubing and a small wooden air stone. Drilled a hole only big enough for the airline in the cap of the collecter cup and fed the aire line right to the bottom of the skimmer. You may have to widdle the edges of the wooden air stone to make it fit though. In doing this I virtully eliminated the need for the air vent on the pump, so I took it off. This caused too much flow going through the skimmer reducing my contact time, fortunatley I had a smaller maxi jet pump laying around, but you could use a valve to decrease the flow.

Within a day I was getting great skimmate for only a $4.00 modification.

Hope this helps!

[Chad]

I've done this as well.. Except I bough a big chunck of Basswood, and a dowel maker drill bit and make my own wooden air diffisuer. Works excellent I agree.. however I still do not get dark skimmate. I may try and increase the inner tube height and try and raise the collection cup as well.. This way I can push more flow and have the air pump on higher so I can get some more skimmate.

[danny zubot]

What size tank are you skimming with your modified seal clone? Mine is a 54g corner with 15 gallon sump. I think I have 110 gallons per hour of flow though my sea clone which should be close to the recomended flow rate for my system. I haven't noticed very dark skimmate either, but my tank was moved three weeks ago and I may not have the protien levels to warrant it yet. Let me know how you're mods turn out because I was thinking of doing somthing similar.

[danny zubot]

I decided that the skimmer needed to improved again, this is what I did.

Reached in side the skimmer and broke off the inner riser tube. Doing this in itself would have little effect on the performance of the skimmer, but it allowed more room to add larger air diffusers. Now the skimmate it very dark and there is much more of it.

Next mode will be increasing the size of the collection cup.

[Chad]

actualy I have not done anything with my sea clone recently. Its such a pain in the butt.. I really hate it :eek: :lol: .. its on my 20gal nano. It just gives me green tea.. and I have not found the time to find a piece of acrylic that fits the tube size.. I may go with something like PVC.

Let me know how your mod goes.

[kooltank]

check out this link from AP http://www.aquariumpros.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=10221&highlight=seaclone

[kooltank]

I currently own Euro-reef CS6-1 model and this seaclone 150 running simultaneously. I set this seaclone running wet foam collecting in the cup and draining into a mod drain pipe while Euroreef running dry.

http://www.unkool.com/photos/albums/swa/seaclone.jpg

[danny zubot]

I think the one in Kooltank's pics is a larger model than mine but basically the mods are the same. The only problem I have had lately is the power head I was running broke and its replacement is too big. It skims a bit funny now. :mrgreen: