- Today on BRS TV investigates, are you using your single
pump, DC-powered Skimmer to its full potential?
Are there ways to harness the DC Skimmer pump's features
in order to finally achieve that optimal skim?
Today we test them to find out and then later,
we're putting it all together on a real-world reef tank,
the BRS 750 XXL.
Hi I'm Randy with this Friday's BRS TV Investigates
where we put popular reefing gear, theories and methods
to the test by experimenting on our own tanks,
so you don't have to experiment on yours.
And in today's experiment, we doubled down on testing
DC-powered Skimmers we're into last week's test
using DC-powered recirculating skimmers,
we discovered that we had the ability to control
the type of skimmate foam produced, either by
making it wetter or dryer by simply changing the speed
of the air draw, and in turn, the velocity of the air
leaving the skimmer neck, using the push button controls
of the pump driver.
However since more reefers likely use a single pump
DC protein skimmer over the recirculating design,
today we thought we'd conduct a similar test using
the adjustable speeds of the Skimz SN167 Monster
DC Skimmers to see if we could achieve the same results.
What we find out today just might change the way
you adjust your DC Skimmer going forward.
As we mentioned in previous skimmer testing videos,
our skimmers are essentially foam engines,
and we can expect optimal engine performance
when the right ratio of organics and air is achieved.
Over the course of the last four skimmer tests,
we've been learning more about ways we can control
the amount of air inside the protein skimmer body,
and what affect those changes play on the type
of skimmate we can produce.
In last week's test we set three DC recirculating skimmers
to three different air draw rates using different
power settings on the skimmer pump controller
and discovered that a lower amount of air draw resulted
in a much thicker, dryer foam head with a higher
concentration of organics, while the highest amount
of air draw yielded a much wetter, less organically
rich foam that collected far more water content
into the collection cup versus the dry skim.
One thing that was blaringly obvious is what goes
into the skimmer must come out,
so much faster air draw creates much faster rising bubbles,
which do seem to collapse faster as well.
Ultimately we found that with the push button controls
to air draw we gain a much wider range of control
over the type of skimming produced,
where neither more or less air was better,
but rather the right amount of air,
tuned to your specific bioload is better.
These results lead us to today's experiment
where we answer the question,
Does a single pump DC-powered Skimmer provide us with
as much control and tunability as a recirculating
skimmer design?
Let's find out.
Okay so today's experiment is nearly identical
to last week's test, except this time we're using
a more common skimmer design, and budget range,
with three Skimz SN167 DC Single Pump skimmers.
Where in the first test we set the pump speed
of each skimmer using the DC pump controller,
with test Tank 1 set to the lowest speed of setting 1,
test Tank 2 set to the middle speed of 10,
and test Tank 3 maxed out with a speed setting of 20.
We installed each skimmer at nine and a half inches of water
which is right at the top end of the Skimz DC Skimmers
water depth recommendation from the manufacturer
and was also the depth that showed the widest range
of air draw.
We then adjusted the water height inside each one
to equal levels, then dosed five mills of organics
or skimmate to each tank every 10 minutes,
and watched to see how the different skimmer speeds
affected the type of foam produced.
In a second test using the same pump speed settings,
and organic dosage, we actively tuned the water level
inside each skimmer as we dosed the organics,
which is more representative of how most reefers
would use them at home.
Remember, what we're looking for here is whether or not
these single pump adjustable DC Skimmer designs
that only have one pump in charge of drawing
in air and water will produce similar skimmate foam results
like what we saw in last week's testing,
where tuning the air versus the water level inside
was the best method of achieving a wetter or dryer skim.
Let's see how they performed.
In the first test, where we set each skimmer's water
height to equal levels inside the skimmer bodies,
and then set their pump speeds to settings of one, 10
and 20, from left to right respectively,
we can see that after several doses of skimmate to each,
there's definitely signs of a thicker, more dry
skimmate foam in Tank 1, over the very large
and wet bubble foam in Tank 3.
Again as we saw in previous tests, Tank 2 is running
at about middle of the road between the two pump
setting extremes and also similar to the last test,
is that although the low flow, low air draw of Tank 1
does create some dry thick foam, there isn't enough
velocity at this water height setting to push the foam
up and into the collection cup.
Looking at the time lapse of all three tanks in test one
we see that the higher velocity of air in Tank 2 and Tank 3,
push the foam bubbles all the way up into the neck
of the skimmer and spill over into the cup.
We can see they collect a mixture of both organics
and water, which give the skimmate a wet, light brown
look to it that would also allude to it being less
organically rich, whereas in Tank 1 with low air flow,
by nearly the end of the test, the dryer skimmate foam
is able to build up enough to start raising into the neck.
But without using the gate valve to actively make
adjustments to the water level inside the skimmer body,
at this setting, there's just not enough velocity
to push that dry skimmate into the collection cup.
But what happens when we do start making those active
adjustments to water level inside the skimmer body?
Let's find out what happens in the next test.
Test two is next where we repeated the same settings
and dose of the organics, however this time rather
than just monitor the foam production, we actively tuned
the water level to adjust how each skimmate foam head
was collected.
As the test progresses you can clearly see that we needed
to raise the water level inside Test Tank 1 in order
to get the thick dry foam to raise up into the skimmer neck,
while in Test Tank 3 we had to lower the water level
nearly to as much as possible in order to keep the cup
from overfilling to quickly.
This is very evident near the end of the test
with the differences between the consistency
of the bubbles within the main chamber of the body,
where in Tank 1, it has more of a clear, transparent
look to the body since there's less air and the bubbles
primarily gather inside the neck.
However in the middle Tank 2 you can see that the larger,
more turbulent bubble reaction is happening in the upper
third of the skimmer body all the way up into the neck.
While in Tank 3, there is so much air and air velocity
that large bubbles are forming in more than half
the skimmer body all the way up into the cup,
to the point where the cup fills up rather quick
with wet, organically less dense skimmate water.
So of these three skimmer settings we tested today,
if I had to personally choose one of the setting options,
it would definitely be Test Tank 2, but keeping in mind
that these settings are specific to the organic load
that we put into the tanks.
It's important to note that the adjustability
of the DC pump did allow us to adjust the air to the amount
of organics in this test, which is something you can do
on your own tank, where we all have different amounts
of fish and food.
So we've got one more protein skimmer performance test
coming up in this BRS TV Investigates series.
But before we reveal what that test will look like,
let's rate today's questions on the reef fantasy
to reef certainty scale.
As to the question of does a single pump DC-powered
Skimmer provide us with as much control and tunability
as a recirculating DC Skimmer design?
Although having a single pump skimmer design
with an adjustable DC pump does provide us with more control
over the type of skimmate foam that the skimmer produces,
there are still factors like operating depth
or water height in the sump that will absolutely
have an affect on their performance,
which needs to be accounted for when tuning,
whereas with the recirculating skimmer design,
the operating depth just isn't an issue,
which is why I'm rating this one a seven out of 10.
The single DC pump Skimmer is easier to adjust
over a single AC pump skimmer,
but falls short of a truly configurable option like
the DC recirculating skimmer, or 200 Regal EXT
that we've tested.
Okay so what's in store for the next skimmer test?
Well we actually use a Reef Octopus Regal 200EXT
recirculating skimmer on our very own VRS 750 XXL.
So we plan to take what we've learned about tuning the air
draw rate and put it to the test on a real world tank
full of fish and SPS corals.
It was this very 750 XXL tank that we teamed up
with World Wide Corals to create what we feel
is the only SPS reef tank setup guide you'll ever need.
So if you wanna achieve results like this,
and emulate what some of the best reefers in the industry
are doing, here's the link to that.