Converted an old wet dry, into remote skimmer

[reefkprz]

well we all know how much coralife super skimmer stink, but after changing the sump on my 65g to a rubbermaid tote and placing the sump itself onto an elevated platform am sealing under the platform to catch minor spills. I didnt have enough room to put the skimmer back on the tank.
after about a month skimmerless, with my feeding habits I am getting a cyanobloom in the 65, not a suprise so I went all creative and built a remote station for my skimmer.
works pretty good so far. I put the poly pads in the old "drip" section just so I can kick up detritus and junk over the next couple weeks and change it out without doing a lot of water changes. as you can see by how nasty the polypad looks, its working. this has only been running (at the time of the picture) for 6 hours or so. I keep reaching in the tank and kicking up nasty stuff and blowing around detritus.
in the end, ANY skimmer is better than no skimmer.
the water level in my sump is lower than its going to be but I broke a heater in my mixing tank and need to clean it out which entails ripping my entire fish closet apart, because I cant remove the tank without removing th stand its on the closet isnt wide enough to get one out around the other. I may have to rethink this set up.

 

[reefkprz]

not to mention once my suimp is refilled this adds a couple gallons to the overall volume.

 

[reefkprz]

refilled my sump, total water volume added is almost exactly 5 gallons.
those poly pads look lasty today. a couple more days of kicking up the crap and I should have removed a lot of the problem ->detritus build up. I realized how much crap was setteling out in my sump and just sitting there rotting so i added a LARGE powerhead to my sump to keep it all kicked up to run through the remote filter.
thinking about this, I realized I just turned this wet dry into a HUGE skimming hang on back filter

the things I do when i am bored, and want to modify my tank.
oh I included a picture of what the polypads look like this morning, NASTY. I'm going to change them right now.

 

[reefkprz]

oh come on, no one finds it amusing that I just reinvented the HOB skimmer/filter?

 

[keebler]

That's kinda cool, I find it amusing.

 

[wattsupdoc]

Originally Posted by reefkprZ
http:///forum/post/2763960
oh come on, no one finds it amusing that I just reinvented the HOB skimmer/filter?
Good ole american ingenuity at it's finest!

Fish closet HAH, I got one of those too! Only mines just storage for dry goods etc.

At least until I get some of the pile of old useless crap that I will never use, but cant seem to make myself get rid of out of there. Then..........

 

[reefkprz]

my fish closet is so narrow that now that I have the 2 20g tanks in there its nearly impossible to get in at my stuff things fall to the back where I cant reach them and have to kind of tip myself in and wedge sideways while braced off the wall so i dont fall in and get stuck.
there has to be a better way.

 

[kilted reefer]

I am always amazed at what you come up with. But how is the water getting to your remote skimmer station? I see the pipe going through the side of the stand and it looks like that is the return to the sump.

 

[reefkprz]

Originally Posted by Kilted Reefer
http:///forum/post/2765598
I am always amazed at what you come up with. But how is the water getting to your remote skimmer station? I see the pipe going through the side of the stand and it looks like that is the return to the sump.

there is a pump in the sump with a feed to the old "trickle section" that is now the filter pad/carbon/randome media spot. I'll snap some shots, the feed line runs out through the same hole in the side of the stand.

 

[kilted reefer]

Cool. I figured it was something I just couldn't see in the original pictures. It looks like you are going to use this in your new frag tank setup.

 

[reefkprz]

absolutly. I like this. I am going to try and use mechanical filtration and foam fractionation with LR to make up for the lack of sand.