Fresh Water Protein Skimmer

[RandyStacyE]

I made a pretty good DIY Needle Wheel Protein Skimmer for my salt water tanks and it skims excellent! My wife has a 75 gal fresh water turtle tank with 2 turtles, a pleco, some little cat fish (maintenance crew), bunch of snails and a few junk fish. I currently use a Little Giant 2-MDQX-SC return pump, DIY Siphon Overflow, cheapo JEBO UV Sterilizer and some DIY Filter Socks.

The system is running just about tip top, but these turtles make for a real dirty aquarium. Does anyone have any experience with successfully running a protein skimmer in fresh water aquariums? Is it truly worth it?

 

[SkiFletch]

Wow, fantastic DIY Randy, really impressive.

Sadly, protein skimmers in a freshwater world are not worth it due to a few properties of physics. The main problem is that microbubbles do not form readily in a freshwater environment of low specific gravity. They only really form in a high sg saltwater environment. People have tried creating enough microbubbles with multiple re-circulating needle wheel pumps and a very low flow through the skimmer in the past but ultimately to get enough bubbles, you'd probably need 4 big sedra pumps to do it and even then the bubles are barely fine enough to pull any skimmate. I've seen pictures on the net in the past of people who had done it, and got some skimmate, but nowhere near as much as we get out of saltwater setups

 

[raptorrex]

I made a pretty good DIY Needle Wheel Protein Skimmer for my salt water tanks and it skims excellent! My wife has a 75 gal fresh water turtle tank with 2 turtles, a pleco, some little cat fish (maintenance crew), bunch of snails and a few junk fish. I currently use a Little Giant 2-MDQX-SC return pump, DIY Siphon Overflow, cheapo JEBO UV Sterilizer and some DIY Filter Socks.

The system is running just about tip top, but these turtles make for a real dirty aquarium. Does anyone have any experience with successfully running a protein skimmer in fresh water aquariums? Is it truly worth it?

it would seem that the skimmer would need to be over 2mtr in hight to work effectivly in fresh water.