Eheim Surface Extractor

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as said by many people the eheim surface extractor has some issues keeping itself running. i put one on my tank the other night only to come home to it not running. it hooks up to my 2217 using a T-junction, so both of these have to be under siphon in order to work.

some people have replaced their original intake with the surface extractor only but apparently this gets noisy because of the large flow. so you need a lot of flow but not too much.. no wonder people complain this is a fiddily device.

i think i got it licked. what i did was went to home depot and picked up a 1/2" ball valve with some barbed adapters and put this between the standard intake and above the T-junction.

if the valve is closed all flow will be siphoned through the surface extractor, if its fully open most of the flow siphons through the standard intake. i'm going to let it run a few more days. as for now the water inside the extractor is about 75% full with some nice bubbling inside so i guess thats the idea.

 

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Fluvals version already has that sort of system built in. The further you open the valve the more water is taken from surface or from the tank. Mine was noisy, however it did a great job of taking the scum off the top of the water when my tank was set up with coral sand and rock! It was easy to upset though, you only had to put your hand in the tank and the floating bit on the top would gargle itself down to the bottom section, sucking fishes in if you didn't retrieve it fast enough!

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