DIY mega project for protien skimmer on 1 million gallon tank

[SeaLabFlorida]

Anyone want to give designing a skimmer for a million gallon tank a try? Requirements: Can be up to three skimmers to handle system. Must be less than 10 ft tall overall. Must be able to be made with parts from HomeDepot or similar store. If you design a working system and we decide to build it, I will name the system after you and it will run our facility.

Alan

[Fibinotchi]

Seems to me we might need some pictures, or some sort of explanation of the room it would be in at the facility. Is there a large "sump" that the three skimmers would be drawing out of? What would be the dimensions of the "sump".

This is a cool opportunity. What about flying out the winner if there is one to the grand opening or something?

[widmer]

Here, why don't I get the ball rolling. Let me know when it's built:

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/widfis/skimmer.jpg

[Jeff000]

You are making a million gallon tank from parts at home depot?
This does not add up in the least.

You are talking 20 million + dollar project that will make the top 10 largest aquariums in the world and looking on reef central for advice on one small part of a system that needs to be completely tuned with all other equipment.

I don't even know what to make of this request for real.

[Harry_Y]

just buy a sea clone 100

[Jon Lazar]

You are making a million gallon tank from parts at home depot?

I read his first post to mean the skimmer has to be constructed with HD equipment, not the tank.

[Jon Lazar]

Here, why don't I get the ball rolling. Let me know when it's built:

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/widfis/skimmer.jpg

Widmer, I think you should place the air pump above the water line, or you'll get a back siphon when the power goes out or the air pump fails. Hate to see 1000000 gallons of water on his floor.

[Xpilot]

Ask SeaWorld or Atlantis for a tour of their equipment room, no reason to re-invent the wheel, they both have working tanks of that size.

[franklypre]

Just get a couple of 55 gallon plastic drums and a few dozen Sicce pumps, construct your collection cups and wah la.

[Jeff000]

I read his first post to mean the skimmer has to be constructed with HD equipment, not the tank.

I did as well, my statement was a blanket statement meaning that on a project of this scale sourcing a part should not be a question.

[rkesling]

Is this a serious thread or a joke? If serious, can't wait to see this build.

[567234ta]

1 million gallons??? Is this in your bedroom? :inlove:

[SeaLabFlorida]

Its nice to see the various comments. No, the tank isnt to be a HomeDepot tank LOL I was speaking of a skimmer. Yes the tank is real There are no space constraints but also no sump for it to sit in. Yes I could purchase a factory made skimmer but where is the fun in that. So, I was looking for some interesting ideas that people may have on skimmer design. If you are interested in giving some ideas, great ! If not, I guess I will buy one and we dont have fun with it.
Alan

[widmer]

Well I know I really made light of it with my microsoft paint drawing...

But if you visit www. .com, it looks like there are some real plans for this volume of water.

And then if you consider a US gallon is approximately 6.15 inches cubed, this would be like 100 a ft x 100 ft x 13 ft pond. Sure it would take a few months to dig out with a bobcat, but I could see it happening.

What I [I]can't see happening is expecting people to come up with a design plan for a protein skimmer to treat this volume without mentioning anything about the bioload. Depending on whether this is a show tank or a coral propagation pond the difference could be literally dozens of pounds of fish swimming around to clean up after...

[widmer]

Its nice to see the various comments. No, the tank isnt to be a HomeDepot tank LOL I was speaking of a skimmer. Yes the tank is real www.sealabflorida.com There are no space constraints but also no sump for it to sit in. Yes I could purchase a factory made skimmer but where is the fun in that. So, I was looking for some interesting ideas that people may have on skimmer design. If you are interested in giving some ideas, great ! If not, I guess I will buy one and we dont have fun with it.
Alan
www.SeaLabFlorida.com

Not that I'm asking you to promise this will materialize any time soon, but what are you going to be doing with this volume of water? From visiting your website, I would guess that you will be propagating coral... But, do you care to describe?

[BeanAnimal]

Skimming that volume of water using foam fractionation is done regularly in some wastewater treatment facilities. Your "skimmer" is going to be the size of a swimming pool and require a fairly large (tractor trailer size) regenerative blower/compressor to operate, not a few hunks of 6" pvc from home depot and a needlewheel or three.

You are certainly aware of the enormous skimmers that some zoos and public aquariums use on tanks a fraction of the volume you are proposing.
http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/skimmerwhole.jpg.w560h747.jpg

The image above shows a skimmer on a dolphin habitat that is likely rated at 20,000 to 30,000 gallons. The skimmer is nearly two stories tall and only used to polish the water after it travels through a farm of gigantic sand filters. You would in effect need nearly 50 such DIY skimmers (I.E. a swimming pool sized foam fractionation pond with hundreds of industry standard membrane diffusers.) DIY... Sure, all wastwater treatment plants are "DIY".

FWIW the Georgia aquarium uses around 60 of the monster RK2 skimmers... so my quess is that you could get away with maybe 8-10 of the RK2 RK1000 or RK2000 skimmers. DIY from home depot... not even thinking outside of the box....

[sergebmw2]

OMG!!!!!!!!! that is HUGE:spin2::spin2::spin2::spin2::spin2:

[MrKite24]

Who needs a skimmer?! If you're close enough to the ocean just do continual water changes with ocean water.

[BluScrnOdeth]

THats why i mentioned to him, instead of a skimmer, you could use ATS's. Much more compact and no need to buy a super expensive setup, can be all gravity fed but would need return pumps of course. Then you would just have to replace bulbs every 4 months. either way, the electric bill would be crazy.

[widmer]

The ATS could end up being by farrrrr more economical than building and powering a skimmer. You could build it to run off of that Florida sunshine, and your only power source would be exchanging water through it. I couldn't imagine how exhausting it might be to collect wheelbarrows of algae off of it every week though :lol:

[deehz]

Definitely a gravity fed ATS would be far more economical to this very large system. And with the abundant Florida sun, it can be solar powered to get the algae to grow and put in PV panels to operate the pumps in an open loop system.

What I mean by open loop system is power from the PV panels will operate the pumps and charge several arrays of NMH3 (Nickle metal hydrite batteries--rechargeables that are used in the Prius hybrid car) during the day. During the night time hours, the back up batteries would then run the pumps. A simple computer program would then shut the batteries as the sun is rising and transfer the workload on the PV panels. Its been proven to work and no CO2 footprint! Its a way to think outside of the box and go green.

With the amount spent on very huge skimmers to manufacture and operate, the cost of going to an ATS, PV, and NMh3 batteries would be a lot less and to operate. Probably a lot less then 3 very huge skimmers. Just a thought.

[ANGRY JOHN]

wow that is quite a challange, but as the others have said there might be a limit to reasonably using the same processes on a tank that large, like we do on small tanks. There must be other methods that are a better fit to aquaria that large, just not something we normaly consider due to the normal mind set of what size we are used to dealing with.