Prizm skimmers

[CodeMonkey]

Some of us have prizm skimmers and have found them to be noisy - so what do we do about it?

Well I've tried the *new* 18-blade impellor which is supposedly quieter - no difference.

I've tried floss and water in the dry chamber above the PH to try and quieten the noise of the venturi - no difference.

However I now have a quiet prizm and this is what I did!

I turned it into an air driven skimmer. - with the help of a spare air pump, some rigid airline, some flexible airline and a wooden air stone.

steps.

Remove the collection cup.

Drill a small hole in the top in the centre of the waste cup lid and passed through it the rigid airline. So that it goes though the bottom of the cup and has enough length to reach the bottom of the first chamber.

Attach an airstone to this rigid air line.

Attach the flexible hose to your air pump and to the other end of the rigid air line.

Attach collection cup making sure the airstone is near to the water inflow attach the venturi pipe to its prime position (I).

Turn on skimmer pump

Turn on air pump

And adjust the flow as you would before.

[CodeMonkey]

Now the next stage is to make it more efficient.

If like me you don't have a sump - heck if I did I wouldn't have a prizm skimmer http://www.ultimatereef.net/ibv3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif. Then you you'll notice that you get some scum floating on the surface of the water. Now originally I had a fluval surface skimmer (cost about £10) that I attached to my mechanical skimmer - but all that did was gunk up the mechanical skimmer with waste - it didn't remove it from the system (as a skimmer does) so what I did was attach the same surface skimmer to the input pipe of the prizm skimmer. I did originally try the ABS pipe as seen on some Prizm modification pages but it couldn't cope - noisy and gurgling.

I know have an air driven hang on surface skimming skimmer that is quiet and producing some nice thick gunk.

So if you need a thin skimmer (like I did) with a 2.4" depth and are prepared for an hour or twos work (probably less) the you can pick up a cheap 2nd hand Prizm for £30 and beg/steal/borrow/reuse the rest.

If all goes wrong and you need to go back all you have done is drill a small hole in the top of the collection cup which is easily resealed.