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Ralph Recycles - protein skimmer concepts© Winston Vaughan Schoenfeld
Once again, Peter is here to help with one of the common concepts of filtration. Below is a short discussion on the concepts of protein skimmers, and how Peter has implemented one into his filtration system that he has personally developed.
The nerve! My human is out of town and what do I get? The neighbor kid banging on the glass and shoving a piece of frozen brine shrimp into my tank while he is out laughing it up! The water doesn't always get filled to the same level and my anemone doesn't get any food. It's a darn good thing that that skimmer works well, 'cause I'd be floating belly up by now. As you know, my human decided to build a filter for my tank instead of buying it. Either he just didn't like what he saw out there or he just likes to fiddle around a lot. Well, now that I think about it, both statements seem to carry equal weight. I've been spouting out about using the natural properties of water to assist in the filtration of my tank water. The first thing we talked about was to let all the heavier than water stuff just drop to the bottom (you should find this in the first few articles Peter wrote in Ralph's Corner). Well, what about the stuff that is lighter than water? You got it, bubbles! Air is lighter than water and thus it tends to travel upward, leaving the water behind. The bubbles seem to provide a torturous path for the other lighter than water stuff, and luckily it tends to get entrained in the bubbles and travel upward with the bubbles. Well, this is not completely true; something about proteins and chemical chains... (If you are really interested in the complexities of the chemistry behind protein skimmers, just e-mail me, Winston, and I will fill you in). This is not what Ralph wishes to talk about, the concept of light stuff getting stuck on the bubbles and traveling up is just great for now. It would only seem appropriate that the more you exposed the water to the bubbles, the more that you would remove from the water. So! There are a couple of ways that you can do this. Well, one way is to make sure that there are a lot of tiny little bubbles for the water to move around - the smaller the better. Another way is to increase the probability that the bubbles will come in contact with the water. Again, both things seem to be a really appropriate answer. |
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