DIY Bubble Plate

here is what i had in mind:

the first pic is the skimmer how it is now, the second has the mod. i would add an elbow and a down tube on the skimmer infeed. it would then feed into a 4" piece of pvc with a cap on it with lots of holes drilled in it to act as a bubble plate. what do you guys think? i think i can do all this work inside the skimmer without breaking it apart.

what does everyone think? will this help my skimmer perform?

A bubble plate works by reducing turbulance.  In high turbulance some of the proteins that are attached to the bubbles are dislodged which means less skimmate.  Bubbleplates in standard skimmers and cone shaped skimmers all serve to create a less turbulant smoother transition to the collection cup. 
If you wanted to use a bubble plate than you wouldn't necessarily want your feed pump going in it all all, they are for the output of the two recirc pumps that you already have on your skimmer this would change the turbulance inside the skimmer now to a calmer upward flow of bubbles.  Does it work? Not sure if there is appreciable differences in some skimmers the turbulance does seem to effect the foam head significantly on others I've seen what looks like a hurricane inside and it still skims.  Bubbleplates are more important on short fat skimmers with tons of air intake to calm them down a bit.  It's interesting because this is all counter intuitive from how skimmers were built ten years ago, then we wanted them to "swirl" to increase contact time, not it seems that this dislodges more proteins than it helps to collect.

What skimmer do you have, didn't see it mentioned and what if any mods have you done so far?
If you want an easy premade bubbleplate of sorts I've seen pvc clean out drains that are already drilled and ready to go.
Dion glad to see the G4x is still working good for you.

Thanks dew2loud1 I learn something every day!!!

That should be a decent amount of air for that size skimmer, the aqua euro's are pretty similar to the octopus line, the inputs and outputs on the pumps are very restricted.  You can remove the plumbing and port the output out with a dremel which helps a ton with the octopus pumps and should help a lot with the resun aqua euro pumps.  It will be tough to get in there and re-run the plumbing but its worth a try.

Is yours like this, external model, this one has a bubble plate though
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktHOLB1Im4Y

Thats a lot of air and turbulance for that body.  Have you always used the meshmodded sedra as the feed pump, any difference in skimmate with a smaller pump?
How is the skimmer doing now?

I want to be skimmer crazy too bob.

my skimmer is very similar to the one on the video, but mine has the inlet coming it above, as bob said, and the pumps below pull strait from the body. i am not quite sure what you have in mind for porting the output, do you mean on the pump itself? i bought this skimmer used, and have always used the sedra 9000 for feed pump, dont know how it would perform otherwise.

bob i am going to look into how difficult it would be to add the elbow and pipe, and also how difficult it would be to cut a new hole and use uniseal. i would love to use a sicce but by the time you add up the price of buying the pump/or two, i could just sell my skimmer and get an octo extreme 300.

here is a pic of my skimmer running now. the biggest problem i have is how much wasted space for contact there is in the bottom of the skimmer. i am only using the top half, and if i get the sedra 9000 feeding in the bottom it will help a ton. as you can see i am getting decent skimmate, but only about a pint every week. seems like i could get a lot more. i cant really afford to buy new pumps, but if i get the sedra feeding at the bottom, even without a plate, and mod the resun pumps with mesh and open them up a little, i should do much better than i am now.

ok, change of plans here. i think i am just going to cut the skimmer open. i have a couple questions though.

what do i glue it back together with?

i want to put the feed pump lower, what do i drill the hole with, what size?

i use uniseals right? where do i find those?

www.savko.com
ebay
several of the fish supply places have them as well
I'd just google them

i was thinking about it, and might as well re-use the one i am pulling out. assuming it will be reusable. i will need the fittings anyway, and can just bend a piece of acrylic and use weld on to seal the hole.

yes. in that situation i would. i will be feeding into a piece of pvc in the center, and the water will be sucked out from around the pvc. the bubble plate will be about 5" higher, so bubbles should head up that way before getting sucked out. similar to my first drawing.

I would be worried about what material the skimmer is made out of some acrylic doesnt do well with weldon I saw someone try and glue one up after cutting and it crazed all over he ended up throwing the whole thing away when he was done