ATI threadwheel pumps...

[hahnmeister]

A birdie told me that you guys might be stocking the SICCI pumps for the ATI skimmers. This interests me as I have a DIY skimmer that I would consider replacing the Oceanrunner 3700s on with 2 or 3 of these little devils...

Any truth to this? A price maybe?

[ReefGeek-Greg]

In the long run probably yes, but unfortunately not in the short term.

[hahnmeister]

How long-run are you thinking here? I am using dual Aquamedic 3700s right now... getting about 36 scfh/1028 lph, but alot of water turbluence, and about 100watts. Id like to take that down a little, as well as lower the noise (people are saying the ATI's are dead silent).

My other concern is performance against height. Right now, the skimmer is 4' tall, with about a 3' water height in the 8"x8" main body. The skimmer is flat sided, so I can vary the height of the pumps by simply drilling new holes where I want, but I would like to place the pumps at about 24" deep. Can these pumps still perform at that depth? Or are they not good head performers? They are, after all, only running on what... 12" of water height in those ATI skimmers.

I suppose I could force feed them though too... use a 80scfh air pump on two of them... I might have to add the bubble plate back in then.

[Creetin]

They are strong pumps, I tested the head presure by slowly restricting the output, and the performance curve is great!
Nothing special in testing just a gatevalve, but the pump barely was effected where i thought it should. They are workhorses!
Its no wonder tunze snapped these up for their skimmers as well.
Its like a AC 802 on steroids.

[hahnmeister]

Well, a valve on the water intake can in fact increase air intake, since the relative pressure of the water is lowered and the air is the same, so it makes it easier to just suck in more air as loong as the pump doesnt get oversaturated with air. It has been observed that the ATI BM seems to work better with a lower water level in the sump because of this... less water/more air. But your simulation does not properly simulate the pump's response to increased water depth because it doesnt raise the skimmer's relavite pressure with respect to the surrounding air that the pump is drawing from. Simply restricting the water intake with a valve does not tell me how it would respond to having to pump into a 3' tall column of water... you would have to put some kind of restriction on the air intake as well... and FWIW, this is the variable that most concerns me. If these threadwheels respond half as bad to pressure as a neelewheel compared to a shredderwheel (Ocranrunner or Octopus skimmers have better head handling because of this type of mixing impeller), then I would have to use a forced air method anyways.