Drain fed Recirc not working correctly.

[coryjac0b]

Well recently i decided to remove the maxijet i had feeding my Octopus recirc skimmer to cut down on some power consumption, and decided to let the drain from the tank feed it. I notice that in the hose i used to feed the skimmer its not just a stream of water there are air bubble in it to. I have come to assume that it is the cause of why my skimmer cant build the head that it used to, and that the excess bubble being fed in from the feed line are the cause of this. What can i do to fix this besides putting the maxi jet back on it? On the inside of the skimmer where the feed water is fed into it is a "tee" that pushes the feed water in both directions, what if i change this to an lbow pointing down or to the side? any suggestions?

[ChuckLawson]

I recently setup my DAS EX-1 to feed from my overflow as well. How I did mine was to put a tee in the overflow line, but arranged with the tee "sideways" -- so that the two ends opposite each other are up and down. The upper end of the tee is attached to the overflow line (an "external durso") , and the lower end feeds direct to the skimmer.

The remaining opening (on the "side" of the tee) is routed through an elbow to the sump. On the skimmer line I have a ball valve to regulate the amount going through the skimmer, and any excess goes to the sump.

Hooking it up like this, so that the "straight shot" through the tee is right to the skimmer seems to minimize any bubbles and surging in the skimmer itself -- I can still hear it happening on the sump side, but if I turn off the recirc pump and just watch the flow through the skimmer, it stays steady with no noticable amount of bubbles.

Hope that helps.

[jwccwj]

over in the fins reef/H&S forum there are pics of this but I don't have a link,just go and look there Im sure you will find it.Just search gravity feed.