Moding an air driven skimmer????
 

Has any one ever heard of mods done to an air driven skimmer. I have an old sea clear skimmer on a 100g, does a execlent job. But want more performance.

You could probably mod with a needle wheel pump or something... Is the skimmer external, HOB, or in sump?

This is an external skimmer. Air stone driven.

How many air stones? If you could add one or two that would help performance quite a bit. My skimmer came with the used set up I purchased a couple of years ago and I'm quite content with it's performance. I did a couple of mods to the original config. It came with two air stones and I didn't add any, but changed the t-fitting hookup into a small acrylic manifold. I've seen photos elsewhere of an air stone manifold made from a pvc end cap. Drill it, tap it and then you can attach multiple air stones to it. Can probably glue the fittings as well if you don't have tap & die handy. Here are a couple of shots of mine. I added a t-fitting at the output to enable easier draining if required, also a ball valve to control water column height as well as a slip union to allow easy adjustment of the output pipe length. It is an HOB DIY design but I built a separate stand because I didn't like the weight of it on the rim of my tank. There's an AquaClear 301 ph in a pre skimmer box pushing the water (8 watts) and a Stellar W60 air pump for bubble production (3.2 watts)

http://hlj1yw.blu.livefilestore.com/.../P1010815c.JPG

http://hlj1yw.blu.livefilestore.com/.../P1010815d.jpg

Replacing the wooden airstones on a regular basis and switching to a more powerful pump would help. Air driven skimmers are really hard on the air pumps as wooden airstones causes a lot of back pressure. Regular servicing and replacement of both the stones and the pump is a must. Getting a flow meter of some sort to monitor air flow would be helpful in this regard.