concordo pelo que vi sobre os deltec e os h&s, mas o preço......ui ui.
de qualquer forma achei este artigo e gostei do que li sobre o aqua medic turbofloter 1000 multi.
Aqua Medic turboflotor 1000 multi
The next thing that we would like to introduce is a very common protein skimmer manufactured by the famous Aqua Medic Company. On the left, you see a picture of the Aqua Medic turboflotor 1000 unit. This protein skimmer has a few special features that have been patented by the Aqua Medic. We will look at these special features closely and compare them with the criteria listed above to show why this is a very popular unit.
The turboflotor unit is manufacturered in Germany and is capable of handling 125 to 250 Gallons. This unit, unlike the simple Lee's product shown before, has an external motor (the bottom left) to drive the water (and air) into the skimmer. That is, it is a venturi protein skimmer.
If fully assembled, the plastic pipe is to be connected between the motor and the grey nozzle, the inlet to the skimmer. Water will first enter the motor and then "processed" before entering the skimmer through the inlet. The motor has another inlet (not shown) for an air pump to be connected. Inside the motor, there is a needle wheel, one of the patented key features of the turboflotor. The needle wheel is driven by the motor and is constantly rotating. When the wheel is rotated, the rotation allows the air entering to the motor to dissolve into the current. The significance of the needle wheel is that rotating the wheel with many fine needles on it forces the water to go around the needles, and hence, more water surface is produced. This increase in water surface makes it very effective in generating fine air bubbles. This makes the skimmer work more efficiently than the simple Lee's skimmer. In fact, many American products try to duplicate this feature. But the difference is that their wheels are paddle wheels, not needle wheels. This makes a big difference in performance because the paddles do not force the water to go around them the way the needles do. Hence the paddle wheels do not give the fine air bubbles as the needle wheels do. This automatically gives a good rating on the quality of fine air bubbles to this Aqua Medic unit.
Remember that with the Lee's product, the fine air bubbles, the carrier of the waste, are generated by an air-stone. You can easily image that you will need a bunch of air stones to produce enough air bubbles once the skimmer exceeds a certain level of capability. So the simple skimmers that rely on air stones are only suitable for small tanks. This illustrates the absolute advantage of the venturi protein skimmers as compared to the air-stone skimmers. The venturi skimmers do a much better job than the simple air-stone skimmers in supplying the amount of air bubbles. Compared to the Big Mombasa, we say that the needle wheel is one of the features that makes the turboflotor 1000 unit a much better choice.
The turboflotor 1000 unit is a very popular equipment in our store. This and the following picture are taken from two of our different systems. The tank on the left is the same one that we use to demonstrate different lighting systems - Phase IV, Power Compact - on the MoreLighting page.
The collection cup has just been cleaned before this photo was taken. The collection cup should be cleaned regularly.
The following picture shows the whole setup of a Aqua Medic Reef 500 system. The Reef 500 is a complete biological filteration sytem and it includes a Turboflotor 1000 unit. If you are considering a biological filteration unit, this is really an excellent system. (We will talk about this system in the new page about Biological Filteration.)
Each of the 2 skimmers is placed inside a sump. Pay attention to the shape of the Foam Raiser Tube. You see that the Foam Raiser Tube, the tube inside the collection cup, has a unique shape. The Foam Raiser Tube has a shape of an inverted-cone.
This inverted-cone shaped Foam Rasier Tube is indeed another advantage of this product as compared to the other American products. In order for you to appreciate the significance of this special shaped foam raiser tube, you need to know a bit more of the types of foams that are produced inside the skimmer: normal and protein foam.
Normal foam is produced whenever water is being whirled up and aerated. They break up quickly and settle down easily. Do you see the foam in the middle of the Foam Raiser Tube? The top portion of the foam is brownish, but the bottom portion of foam is white. At the bottom of the foam raiser tube, the white foam is the normal foam. Above the normal foam is the brownish foam or the protein foam. We know that only the protein foam is what we want to collect.
The inverted-cone has such a shape that it reduces the surface area gradually as the foam reaches the top of the foam raiser tube. This increases the probability of the protein foam (also called the dry foam - because the foam is dehydrated) will reach the top and will be collected outside the Foam Raiser Tube. The way the protein foam to be collected is based on the fact that the heavier foam, the normal foam, will not make it to the top because of its weight. Gravity simply pulls the heavier wet foam back down. On the other hard, the dry foam, because of the electrically charged nature, can easily get attached on to the inner surface of the raiser tube. Once the dry foam gets attached, it can make its way up to the top of the raiser tube by constantly being pushed up by the upcoming dry foam. Once the dry foam reaches the top of the Foam Raiser Tube, the dry foam will be collected because the foam is not as heavy as than the wet foam (because of the water molecules). The dry foam will be collected in the volume outside the Foam Rasier Tube and inside the collection cup. So immediately we see that this skimmer is a lot more efficient than the simple Lee's product and the Big Mombasa. It handles most of the problem of sorting the dry foam from the wet foam. For these two features, the needle wheel and the inverted-cone shaped Foam Rasier Tube, we highly recommend this unit to people who are considering of upgrading their skimmers.
Note: It is this special feature of the Turboflotor 1000 unit inspires us to come up with the Dry Foam Collecting Efficiency criterion in order to compare different products. So you see the these criteria that we have listed here really comes from our daily experience and from our own experiments with different products. It is not hard to see and it is nothing but common sense.
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