burris
08/29/2007, 09:04 PM
Skimmers mix bubbles with water so they necessarily suck air from somewhere. Most skimmers have some tubing from which they draw air from a spot above the water. Unfortunately, sucking all that air through a piece of tubing into a venturi makes a lot of gurgling noise. Fancy skimmers come with mufflers installed. Fortunately, mufflers are very simple. This is how you can make your own muffler.
Just get a small, clean plastic bottle, like the kind used to hold lotion or even a small soda bottle. Essentially, you want to make a hole at each end of the bottle the same size as the air tubing and stick the end of the air tubing into one of them. That is basically it. You can make it work even better by very loosely packing individual sheets of toilet paper, filter floss, or pillow stuffing into the bottle.
I used the hole in the cap of the lotion bottle and enlarged it slightly with a drill bit, then made an off center hole in the bottom. You can use a knife to make your holes too. If your hole isn't particularly round or you made it a bit too big, you could use some silicone to seal around the tubing. You could also put some hose barbs into the holes and silicone them in for a fancier design.
Simple, effective, and cheap. Too bad everything related to your tank isn't like that.
Just get a small, clean plastic bottle, like the kind used to hold lotion or even a small soda bottle. Essentially, you want to make a hole at each end of the bottle the same size as the air tubing and stick the end of the air tubing into one of them. That is basically it. You can make it work even better by very loosely packing individual sheets of toilet paper, filter floss, or pillow stuffing into the bottle.
I used the hole in the cap of the lotion bottle and enlarged it slightly with a drill bit, then made an off center hole in the bottom. You can use a knife to make your holes too. If your hole isn't particularly round or you made it a bit too big, you could use some silicone to seal around the tubing. You could also put some hose barbs into the holes and silicone them in for a fancier design.
Simple, effective, and cheap. Too bad everything related to your tank isn't like that.