Reeftek External water level

viper357

viper357

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Has anybody experimented with the external water level on their reeftek skimmers?

I have just built a platform to stand my skimmer on, raising it out of the water by about 7 or 8 cm's.

Here is a pic of the water level where it is now, in the last few days I am getting hardly any skimmate, maybe 3mm as opposed to about 20mm I used to get, so I am now thinking that there must be an optimum external water level for this skimmer to operate at it's optimum.

You can see where the water level used to be by the greenish/yellow tinge on the airline.

IMG_0202.jpg
 
shouldn't you be able to compensate the external water level by raising the water outlet?
 
I've tried both lowering and raising, nothing helped.
 
now i havent fiddled that much with a reeftek but my thinkng would then be to partially block the outlet of the skimmer kinda like the aqua medic sl does to adjust bubble height??
 
But why is the skimmer doing this? Surely the outside water level should not affect the way the skimmer performs. The water level inside the skimmer is still the same. Has it got something to do with water pressure on the venturi or the bubbles inside the skimmer?
 
is this skimmer on your system and all you have done is lowered the water level?
 
Dean it will have an affect. Remeber that pump is feeding and chopping up the water. By raising the skimmer you are putting head pressure on the pump, therefore slowing is down. Ideally your skimmer should sit in your sump at the same height you want the water level to be, putting zero head pressure on the pump.
 
I would disagree to some extent. It's a bit of a trade-off. On the one hand, a shallower pump will pump less water through the skimmer body due to head loss, but a deeper submerged pump will probably produce less air volume in the skimmer.

I have raised my TS1 so that the sump water level is barely above the skimmer inlet, and have found my skimmate production to have improved.
 
Anthony, your post confused me a bit, but then I realised why... I have also raised the pumps with the skimmer, so the entire skimmer and pumps have all moved up, which means there is even less head on the pumps as the pump inlets are now sitting closer to the water surface. Did I explain that right?
 
Craig said:
I have raised my TS1 so that the sump water level is barely above the skimmer inlet, and have found my skimmate production to have improved.
Click to expand...
Hi Craig

Is that similar to my pic above? Did you also raise the pump?
 
viper357 said:
Anthony, your post confused me a bit, but then I realised why... I have also raised the pumps with the skimmer, so the entire skimmer and pumps have all moved up, which means there is even less head on the pumps as the pump inlets are now sitting closer to the water surface. Did I explain that right?
Click to expand...

The height difference between the water surface and the skimmer outlet is what matters for head pressure. When your skimmer was lower down, the outlet would have been closer to the sump water surface, so lower head pressure. Now the outlet is further above the water surface, so more head pressure.
 
Craig said:
The height difference between the water surface and the skimmer outlet is what matters for head pressure. When your skimmer was lower down, the outlet would have been closer to the sump water surface, so lower head pressure. Now the outlet is further above the water surface, so more head pressure.
Click to expand...

ah, now that makes sense, thanks.
 
Hell this is getting confusing. I have never used the Reeftek but from what i can see it has a auto lever for the water in the skimmer itself similar to that of the new Tunze skimmers. So i would drop the skimmer until the outlet just sticks out the water by about 1-2 cm's. The reason for this is as DR has stated that you dropping the head pressure on the pump itself. I know the BM is also recomended to be at a depth of 20-25 cm other wise the pumps are pushing too hard to drive the water flow and not enough airflow.
 
Well I removed the stand I built and put the skimmer back to how it was, she's pumping much better now :D
 
Phwww after all those long and confusing conversations it works lol:)
 
yeah it works as long as you don't fiddle with it in the first place ;)
 
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