needle wheel pumps

[StirCrazy]

ok, I am bulding a massive skimmer and instead of going with a dual beckett or venturi I have decided to go with dual needle wheel pumps. Problem is I have no experiance with them so I don't know what size to buy.

the skimmer its self is a 9" dia tube on a box about 40" tall (tube is 30" tall and box is 10ish) so there is a tone of volume to it. I was looking at the sedera 9000 but I am not sure if the skimmer size warents two of these.

the two pumos are going to be set up as a recirculating system and I will have a different pump to feed the water to the skimmer.

should I use two 9000's or should I go down a size? or maybe go with a different pump, like the ones the octopus uses at 1/2 the price.

Steve

[trilinearmipmap]

Sedras have a few problems, most notable the magnet casing swells up and after a couple of years the impeller tends to bind and you have to replace the impeller. In addition Sedras are noisy.

[fkshiu]

Seems like the latest king of the needlewheel pump hill is currently the Askoll pump which comes with the new Octopus/MSX Extreme skimmers. It is considered so because it is what a Red Dragon pump on a Bubble King starts out its life as before Klaus adds the custom volute and various titantium bits.

It's a shame that you bring up the question now since C&C Marine of Quebec (who originally designed the new Octo Extreme skimmers before a falling out with Coralvue) was selling turn key Askoll skimmer pumps complete with volute and needlewheel on their website. A shame because they recently went out of business.

I know people have been using Eheim 1262s as DIY needlewheel pumps with good success.

Here's BeanAnimal's page on a DIY needlewheel with an Oceanrunner pump although now it appears he will be switching to an Eheim:
http://www.beananimal.com/projects/6'-needle-wheel-protein-skimmer.aspx

If you look on RC's DIY forum there was a massive thread on Hahnmeister's attempts to recreate a Red Dragon from a Hagen Laguna pond pump (which also has the Askoll pump its heart).

I'm running a Warner Marine RX200 prototype skimmer right now with a Sedra 9000HO pump. It's very quiet. The volute looks like a custom one and the discharge has been hand ported.