SWC 160 cone skimmer

SWC is a company thats good at pushing out quality skimmers with a reasonable cost. The SWC 160 cone which has been reviewed quite a bit is no exception. The skimmeris a nice piece of hardware thats easy to install for the everyday reefer. The best part about this skimmer for me is the aesthetics, the white acrylic it uses makes this skimmer look to be a high end skimmer. Now im not saying this skimmer is bad, its far from it but like everything we buy, the looks matter quite a bit as the aquarium industry/hobby is based quite heavily on visual representations.

The packaging on the skimmer is in my opinion as good as it gets for a pre-fabricated unit, the foam used in the packing is 1"thick on all sides and when I got the box it felt rigid. The skimmer came with everything, and a piece of paper for the manual which i find to be quite useless since the skimmer was so easy to use.

Features:

-Cone Body

-Large Collection Cup

-Gate Valve Wedge Pipe for ease of tunning

-Silencer

-650 litres/hour air draw

-Small Footprint of 9" x 7" x 20.58"

-Fully dis-assemble for cleaning

The skimmer itself has pretty good craftsmanship, a decent thickness on the acrylic was used and the seams seem well put together. The collection cup snaps in via a compression of o-ring like you would see on a BK or vertex cone skimmer and requires only 1/2" clearance to get the cup out. The venturi is pretty nice as well , it snaps in just like the collection cup so cleaning should be pretty easy. There you have it a skimmer thats built with the reef keepers in mind one that will work efficiently without breaking the banks.

Final: Mame update

having tested the overflow in a spare tank with freshwater i found the venturi tubes inner diameter to be too small. Though the system did work during the priming stages the water in the tank would get close to the rim and i didnt want to take the chance of it flooding. So in an attempt to bore out the venturi the bit caught the acrylic and cracked both venturis down the middle of the pipe. For those that are planning on building a replica down the line i would recommend buying 1/4" thin walled tubing for the venturi. Overall though the project has been fairly easy to do and the cost was only $25 for all the material cost that is buying the tubing at full length as well (6ft). For the time being I'll be going a different route with my personal reef tank and hope you guys enjoyed the build.

Final: Mame Overflow

after 3 days of work the construction of the mame overflow DIY edition has come to an end. It was a pretty interesting experience. I would estimate the total amount of time invested in creating this overflow took less then 8 hours total. I have ordered a pump able to push 300GPH at 4ft so i'll be testing it out once i recieve the pump and will post a video of it.

Continuation: Acrylic Mame Overflow construction

did a bit more work on the overflow and so far its coming along great. I forgot to mention that i decided to use 7/8" OD tubing for the drain and 5/8" OD tubing with thin wall for the return which isnt part of the assembily yet. The overflow is broken down into 3 parts just like the origional mame version for ease of cleaning and connected together via 3/4" ID (lack of 7/8" tubing from local stores) vinyl tubing and 5/8" ID tubing Im looking forward to seeing this thing come together and working.

I'll let the pictures do the talking from here on.

The Beginning

As stated in the last post I've started the building of a Mame Overflow via the use of acrylic. The first step, bending acrylic tubes. There are of course multiple ways of doing this but the way i chose to do it is without fillers or using a spring, I always find this way produced the best result with the least amount of kinks.

The key to this type of bending is the sum of the bends equals the total arc you want to achieve.

Mame Design: Glass Overflow

Its not everyday that you see products that is made with design in mind. The overflow made by Mame Designs allows for 3 very critical elements to come together flawlessly.

1. Simplicity
2. Functionally
3. Ease of use

Though the actual design of the overflow is not innovative its clear that Mame took the design and give it a 21st century twist. The Mame overflow is not just your normal tubular overflow, the added venturi fitting that re-primes the siphon in the overflow tube is a added feature that is for some reason was left out until now. If you're unfamiliar with overflows, that means when the power goes out and comes back on the siphon will continue due to the vaccume formed by the return line and re-prime the overflow everytime so you dont get a flood in the room which your aquarium sits.

Now comes the fun part. Since i own an aquarim of my own, and really enjoy the fabrication process it takes to make a product, I'm going to attemp to build one of these out of acrylic tubing. Stay tuned.

Why hello everyone

Hi everyone, welcome to my new blog about design and all that interest me. My name is Eugene Suyu, a 22 year old interactive designer who is also very interested in product design. This of course is only my acadameic interest but has carried over to my hobby and passions. My other passions are photography and saltwater reef aquariums. Im sure if you guys decide to follow there will be moment where you will find some blogs about my personal interests, or maybe the blog will move towards more of my interests i have yet to decide. I'll just let this blog go whichever way without determining, making it a little more interesting.

Thats it about me, hope you followers will enjoy your stay here