Octopus Funnel neck skimmer owners.

[wattsupdoc]

I have the Octo9 Nw 200. I love this thing and have highly modified it. So i wanna show everyone what all I've done. as well as start a thread all present and future octo owners can post in with their experiences with the octo funnel necks. I don't think SWF has this kind of thread for modding. I have many pictures but don't have any of the actual step by step pics of modding as I completed each portion.
Anyways first of here's a pic of my collection cup with 3 days worth of skim mate. On a 135 mixed reef moderately loaded.

The mods I have done thus far on this skimmer are.
Modified the pump to pull more air. This mod consists of cutting the top layer of needles off the needle wheel and adding several layers of enkamat pf4 to the remaining lower level needles. Then , drilling a hole in the intake of the pump, inserting a 3/8 in barb fitting with a diagonal cut on one end into the hole with the cut facing the impeller and attaching an airline to it. I didn't have a dwyers meter to see what I was pulling before the mods, but the difference is definitely noticeable. I had to shorten the riser tube to get the water level down to a level that wouldnt overflow. But later on with another mod, I had wished I hadnt cut it

...You'll see why later on.

When I got my Dwyer's it showed I was consistently pulling 42SCFH!

The funnel seems to get some skim mate build up on the top of it as it initially starts up and begins to skim. While this really isn't a big deal to remove it, I felt If the connection to the funnel and the neck of the skimmer was sealed up then this wouldn't be an issue. While it would loose the function of essentially level stabilizing as is the design intended for, this wasn't an issue I was concerned about, as my water level rarely ever fluctuates in the sump. I used the old air tubing that came with the skimmer to make a gasket. I cut it to length then cut a slit down the center of it so I could slip it around the bottom of the neck. I used superglue gel to hold it into place. By tacking it in a few places. This made a perfect seal and does not leak a bit as you will see later. This didn't not make a difference in the amount of skim mate the skimmer produced. But did eliminate the funnel getting dirty. The crud you see in the pic is along the walls in the funnel compartment, NOT on the funnel as it might appear.

And here it is with these mods thus far after collecting skim mate for 1 day.

So far the cost of these mods would be around 5 bucks if you had to buy the enkamat. But I have a big gob of it, so it didnt cost me anything.

 

[wattsupdoc]

After a while of skimming reliably I realized that the foam was collecting very easily at the surface when I dumped the cup. With the seal in place there's NO water coming from the connection there. So I decided to try raising the funnel to the top of the reaction chamber. It is in fact a very snug fit, and the funnels sits right in there just fine. I initially just raised it about 1/2 way to see how it worked. As I was afraid it might have an issue. However it never did, so I moved it on up, all the way to the top. This increases the contact time quite a bit, as well as causes the water movement at the funnel to be a little less turbulent.

This is the only pic I have of the skimmer at that point in the modding progress. However I do have more progress pics.

By raising the funnel, this meant NOW I could raise the level in the reaction chamber, actually I HAD to raise it to get it to skim.

I had previously cut the riser pipe off and now had wished it was not cut. I used a piece of 1.5 in pvc and a rubber band to raise it back up higher for a while. Then I ordered the gate valve kit and and did the gate valve mod on it. Here it is fully raised with the GV mod just sticking up in the pic.

I got a watt meter from Lowe's that I believe is junk, connected it to the skimmer and WOW, it showed it was pulling 197 watts!

I was shocked and tried modding the impeller to get this down. In the process I broke all the needles off the impeller and was screwed. After much debate, and wanting to conserve energy as much as possible, as well as curiosity over the sicce 2500 pumps, I ordered one to replace the octo 3000 with. After playing with it for some time, the stupid thing was only pulling about 22 scfh

initially out of the box. I was ticked! After some tinkering, I got it to pull up to 45 scfh. But i redid the mesh on the wheel, and cut my airline To fit as they didn't supply a venturi, but cut the hole in the intake. The results where minimal in amount the skimmer produced. The only real difference I've been able to notice is the lower power consumption.
I have now realized the watt meter was to blame for the apparently very high wattage.
Here it is with 1 day skimmate running the octo 3000, with the funnel in it's lower position.

Here it is with 2 days skim mate running the sicce pump with the funnel lowered.

It appears as though the skimmate is a tad darker in the pic running the sicce. It may be, but I believe is not as as light as the pic appears in the pic running the octo. So, not counting the sicce pump. These mods can all be done on the NW skimmers for about 50 bucks. The pumps wont be as efficient as the sicce. So it'll cost more to operate it, but in the end, your skimmate production will be very similar. Of course you dont have to do any of these mods to have it skim. And just doing the mesh mod and venturi mods make a tremendous difference. In fact, you can get very good production out of your skimmer with just these 2 mods.