Spazz Volcano Users - Page 4

badbones · #76 06/29/2007, 01:28 AM

Can someone PM me a rough price on this BEAST!!!! I sent Spazz an email on his site with no reply. Its been 2 weeks. I am considering this of a BK400 external and only wnat to buy a skimmer once, as you all know who own one.

Thanks
Tony

hahnmeister · #77 06/29/2007, 01:46 AM

Its about $2600-3600 from what I have heard... depends on exact specs, delivery location, options, etc.

Herpervet · #78 06/29/2007, 11:52 AM

Mine was $3500 delivered.

hahnmeister · #79 07/02/2007, 02:17 AM

Well, had a chance to see the most recently delivered Volcano this weekend.

You know, I cant say 100% sure, but it sure looks like Spazz is using my bubble plate ideas. On the new one, the inlet to the bubble plate has an elbow on its outlet to spin the bubbles under the plate so that larger ones cant form under the holes. Okay, ATI does this as well, sorta.

But he has added a pressure relief hole to the bottom of the bubble plate/chamber to bleed off the extra pressure from under the bubble plate. The combined effect was to allow spazz to get away with just a few large 1" holes as the bubble plate... not like the bubbleking anymore. Effective, for sure. So... Spazz... where you getting those ideas? Lol.

FWIW, there are 3 major design flaws with the skimmer though. Well, not major enough to prevent it from skimming, but enough to hinder it a bit. I can post pics later.

nyvp · #80 07/02/2007, 06:44 AM

well the bleed off holes started with mine back 4 months ago. I was having a problem and we came up that my holes in my plate were way to small( hundreds of small holes). being volcano #1 my skimmer was different. Scott flew down here and he brought 3 bubble plates and we made the holes on the bottom to help with the water pressure goes out the bottom and the bubbles out the top.

spazz · #81 07/02/2007, 08:53 AM

hahn you must have see it at dr foster smiths frag swap. i wish i could have been there. the wifes B-day was saturday so i couldnt make it.
i will be interested to see what you would change with the design.

jayybird · #82 07/02/2007, 07:21 PM

I have the latest Bill Wann design.

horkn · #83 07/02/2007, 10:36 PM

yep, hahn saw it at the fosters and smith at the frag swap.

I was there as well, but did not see hahn.

I did see bill and paul though

hahnmeister · #84 07/03/2007, 03:16 AM

Oh, man... you were there too horkn? I was rooming with Bill, and tended to stay near them during most of it. When did you come up?

The 'bleed hole design'... I think I posted it close to a year ago. The idea was to relieve the pressure that all the extra water pressure under the bubble plate from the pump. This comes in very handy when you have a narrow body skimmer (like when you convert a regular recirc to a bubble plate) because the bubble plate will be very small and therefore not be able to relieve much in the way of turbulence if all that water and air from the pumps has to go through the plate. Or, it also comes in handy when you are using pumps that move alot of water with that air... like an oceanrunner. Dart NW pumps move alot of water for the air they take in, even when force fed. The only drawback of the 'bleed port' or 'bleed valve' in my case is the need to have a bubble chamber under the plate that is tall enough to allow for seperation of the bubbles in the top and only water to flow to the bottom so you dont end up with tons of bubbles being let out the bottom.

I cant remember the thread exactly, but it was one of those where Bean and I (maybe Spazz was in here or there) were arguing about bubble plate design with stmjtk or someone else. I was saying that bubble plate design is somewhat of an exact science, and Bean was arguing that a total area of 2-3x the cross sectional area of the pump outlet should be enough for the total area of holes sumed up in the bubble plate. Shortly after that, Klaus sent me some info/equasions on the exact science of bubble plate design.

The pic I posted looked like this...

In the text, I even suggested being able to run the outlet back into the pump intake as well.

When I saw Spazz's design, I thought to myself 'I wonder where he got that from?!?!' since I did post it here a while back. I ended up using it as well to convert an 8" diameter recirc body into a bubble plate design with only a 6" bubble plate. The outlet was fed into the recirc pump as well.

The thing is, if the water turbulence from the dart is reduced this way, I see no reason why the overall diameter of the Volcano couldnt be reduced since the air throughput is only about 3600 lph at most... and a 12" diameter body can easily handle 4000lph as long as the water turbulence is minimized. You can see in the photographs that the bubble plate only has a few large holes now... these dont even reduce turbulence that much anymore... the 'bleeder' does that more now. The use of more holes that are smaller is better, of course, because it minimizes the upward momentum from each hole... in combo with the bleeder, the bubble plate could be greatly reduced in diameter... you can see that much of the bubble plate is wasted space anyways (its solid)
The spinning of the pump outlet under the bubble plate is more ATI's design in the first place I suppose. I saw how its implimentation could be used to greatly reduce the likelyhood of bubbles combining under a bubble plate's flat surfaces, making those complex 200-300 hole bubble plates with cone shaped holes a thing of the past.

Here's that bubble plate...

As for improvements...
The inlet pipe is just plain wrong. It projects into the middle of the skimmer, and then has an elbow... 45 or 90 makes no difference... the vertex of the angle is in the center of the skimmer. The pipe disrupts the bubbles flowing up, and the angle is useless because at this position, the water just exits at a 90 degree angle to the outside wall of the skimmer. Im just guessing, but I would assume that the elbow would be there to make the water 'spin' around the outside of the skimmer body, like on this design...

But the elbow in the center does nothing. You might as well skip the pipe all together and just have the water enter the skimmer straight into the bubble column in the center. The pipe needs to be shorter... Just look at it...

The other thing is the lid.

The lip on the lid that forces bubbles down around the neck should be deeper, er, come down around the neck more. This prevents bubbles from just coming up the neck and hitting the top of the lid. The air flow pushes the bubbles out to the side. As is, we could all see the foam building up on the underside of the lid and clogging the small holes that lead into the carbon chamber. We agreed that simply having a lid w/o the carbon chamber would be much easier to maintain as well because the foam will follow the air through the carbon chamber... clogging it. If the ring was made deeper, this would be less likely, but even better would be to just have a 1/2" hole or two in the lid that would lead up into a cylinder on top of the lid filled with carbon. Much easier to make, much easier to clean as well in all respects. The 1/2" port would also allow people to simply plumb the outlet air out through a window or wall. For someone running a skimmer that large, this would be a better option as it removed the need for carbon all together, as well as the 'stink factor' 100%... not just what the carbon can do.

There was a third thing... but I just cant remember it right now. Ill have to get back. The larger holes around the bubble plate chamber that allow the water to pass down into the box are something that is useless... you could remove them and reduce construction cost/time by alot, as this part is now more complex to make than the bubble plate itself it seems.

Otherwise, yeah... like the new ReefFlo versions, I see no reason why with the use of the bleeder, the total body can be only 12" in diameter now.

You might consider the Laguna 2400s as well. Much less water flow and more air for less wattage. I understand though that this would mean you couldnt buy just the pump ready to go... but that didnt stop you before. The retrofit to make the pump's external is pretty easy as well.

Ill be coming out with a Laguna version soon... one of the speakers at F&S this weekend asked how the DIY Red Dragon project had come and if I would make a final design for him. I told him that the design was dead because the pump ended up being much more than anticipated... but with his interest, I would complete the skimmer to go with. Should be a blast.

Sparkss · #85 07/03/2007, 11:41 AM

Hahn, we have both types of bubble plates, the many smaller holes and the fewer larger ones. We are currently using the many/smaller one and get good results. It was reported to use that we should try out the fewer/larger one because several people had better skimming when using it versus the many/smaller plate. I cannot say myself from personal experience, but just wanted to pass that long.

I can speak to the lid also, but again only based on our lid. I have seen no problems with the holes leading to the carbon filter getting clogged with foam and/or skimmate, but our lid has the carbon chamber on top. I think the one you looked at was a special order/design for clearance reasons where the skimmer was going to be set up, but I really don't know

.

I am not sure how I feel about the inlet pipe, but it is something that Scott and I discussed on several occassions. We do have ours turned to the side so that the inlet water doesn't go straight down, but does "spin" a little (reminds me of our old Deltec 902 in that manner).

Since we got our water level tuned in on our skimmer, and it slimed up sufficiently, we have had great success with it's efficiency and the wattage draw dropped a solid 15w (since it slimed up), which I found interesting, although it does make sense.

hahnmeister · #86 07/03/2007, 11:48 AM

On the inlet pipe... I agree on the intent, but if that was the case, the pipe shouldnt come into the skimmer so far before the elbow. It should go right into the elbow. As is, its blowing straight into the side wall of the skimmer, as if there was no elbow at all because the elbow is in the middle of the skimmer.

Sparkss · #87 07/03/2007, 11:58 AM

It does hit against our side wall, you can see it when it is running, but believe it or not it doesn't really seem to add to the turbulence level like you would think.

hahnmeister · #88 07/03/2007, 12:08 PM

Right, but its not spinning the output like you said. You might as well just not have any piping on the inside of the skimmer. And there is still a pipe sticking into the middle of the bubble column for no reason.

spazz · #89 07/03/2007, 02:22 PM

the input pipe is made long so the owner has the option to customize the input to his or her personal preference. it is not glued into place so it can be removed and shortened if they want to.
the carbon chamber is also removable if the owner so wishes. it is there if they want to use it or they can simply unbolt it and not use it. either way its personal preference.

the diffuser plate is another choice i have given a couple of people for personal testing if they so wish. the ability to customize there skimmer to there preferences is totally up to them. one person may see better skimming on there system with the small holes and another person may see it with the big holes.
i don't like to make things permanent. set designs can be flawed. so having things variable makes thing easer for people.

46bfinGA · #90 07/03/2007, 02:58 PM

What I would want from a good skimmer! Options.....But I wish they were a bit cheaper so I could afford one. Any chance of a 12" or 14" version that would not need the additional air pump.

horkn · #91 07/03/2007, 07:46 PM

Jon, I was there w/ my GF on saturday from 12:30 -4pm or so.

my cottage is less than a half hour away in Tomahawk.

I was not able to hear if my GF or I won any of the raffle items, but I assume not since I have not yet heard anything..

one of those light movers/ lumenarcs would have been nice, as well as many of the other raffle items.

I did end up with some decent frags, including an acan lord for 12 bucks.

no luck on the bubble coral though. i may have to check with WRS members to see if I can find one of those...

now back to the crazy skimmer talk....

so, Tom Obrecht, have you decided on a mega skimmer yet??

Your new tank has got to be coming along nicely. Its been up for a half a year or so now?

hahnmeister · #92 07/04/2007, 02:33 AM

So how does this sound for a design? 18" diameter, 5' tall, 170 watts, 14" diameter bubble plate/recirc design, and 6800lph of air? Think that will handle a 500g system? Lol.

spazz, Ill be sure to pass that along to Gooch. All three of us were standing around the thing thinking 'what the heck?'. The customization options are great then! I suppose, the bubble plate can be swapped out, carbon chamber is removable, and inlet pipe is not 'set in stone'. I take it back then.

Gooch has had his fill of bunk designs already. The Reef Mania skimmer that blew out because the body wall was too thin, and a wet-neck that didnt work (like a 3/8" gap!), and a calcium reactor with a bubble counter that gets fed from the bottom and cant be opened for filling.

spazz · #93 07/04/2007, 02:25 PM

the only other thing i didnt talk about was relieving the pressure in the diffuser chamber. that idea cam from bill wann. his original big skimmer has that done to it and we have discussed over and over to make ti work better for my design. his skimmer has had that relief hole in it for over 2 years. his diffuser is not designed like mine is. it is glued to the top plate of the box and the plate has the hole in it so it can drain down for cleaning. we never thought it would be used to reliev the pressure in the diffuser chamber. because my diffuser goes all the way to the bottom of the box i have to have the hole in the side of the diffuser chamber. also my design work a little different that your design because the pipe is some what intothe diffuser to allow some suction on the diffuser but not completly isolate the diffuser chambe from the main chamber. its a complicated ballance there that has gone through alot of testing to get it right. too mch suction and you get big bubbles too little suction and you get jetting action.

hahnmeister · #94 07/04/2007, 03:05 PM

Yeah, thats why I ended up putting on a valve, and running the pipe externally so that the exact rate could be adjusted with the valve outside the skimmer.

gooch · #95 07/04/2007, 08:04 PM

First off I am not a techie. As long as it works I will be happy with it. Spazz and I talked about the importance of this skimmer in the filtration process on this tank. This will be about a 550 gallon system/reef. There is no liverock or sand in the tank. Until the tank ages and cures this skimmer is the most important piece of equipment on the tank. I have faith and confidence in Spazz's design.