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270g Starphire build thread (pic intensive) (1 Viewer)

Yes the venturis are 3/4" fittings, and they may be up for sale soon :)

The Sicce mesh mod kit from protein-skimmer.com showed up today (all I really needed was the restrictor orifice for the pump inlet) and I got the mesh mod to it done. I'm not getting the air intake from it that I expected, it will probably take more fiddling. But it's doing 12-14 lpm, about 5 lpm more than the Sedra 9000 meshmod did (and my Dwyer meter has smallish hose connections to it, so I guess the air intake may actually be higher).

So I went thru with the plan to put the needlewheel back into the Sedra and then use it as the skimmer feed pump. It's giving me a higher water turnover than the OR3500/venturis (which is what I wanted), and about 7 lpm air. And this may go up when I increase the outlet pipe from 3/4" to 1" (I need to get a uniseal to do this). With it and the Sicce, I think the skimmer is getting ~18 lpm total. But the biggest improvement is reduction of electricity. Before with the OR3500 and Sedra 9000, it was using around 180W. Now with the Sicce and Sedra it is around 75W. How long will it take for the Sicce to pay for itself? :) Who knows. But now my OR3500 is available to use as the return pump for the frag tank I'm setting up. :)
 
Did you read that thread on RC about them (Sicces)? I think the Quiet One pumps are very similar to them is what I recall (getting old)... It probably won't take too long to pay back... I thought they were getting 40lpm from them... Looks like a good decision though!
 
Awhile back Morty linked me to a few of the mods that were being talked about over on RC - both the Sicces and QO. I have all the parts for modding a QO and a QO 4000 for you Morty if you're interested in giving that a try. I don't think that it will work well for my 6" bodied skimmer and I can't complain about the junk that it is pulling out, so if you'd like - I can get that to you some time and you can have another project to try.
 
That's an interesting offer Zibba, I looked over the threads on modding the QOs, plus the Laguna pumps as well. IIRC the QOs needed a custom volute made for them (or maybe that was the Lagunas) which seemed tricky. The Sicce seemed the way to go to me because I could "reverse engineer" one that I saw on a BM skimmer. Right now I'm disappointed with the numbers that I'm getting from it but when I have a chance I'm going to try a little more tweaking. It is still an improvement over what I had before, and the skimmer is doing a good job of making skimmate..

If you want to try modding the QO I would be glad to help out. :)
 
morty said:
That's an interesting offer Zibba, I looked over the threads on modding the QOs, plus the Laguna pumps as well. IIRC the QOs needed a custom volute made for them (or maybe that was the Lagunas) which seemed tricky. The Sicce seemed the way to go to me because I could "reverse engineer" one that I saw on a BM skimmer. Right now I'm disappointed with the numbers that I'm getting from it but when I have a chance I'm going to try a little more tweaking. It is still an improvement over what I had before, and the skimmer is doing a good job of making skimmate..

If you want to try modding the QO I would be glad to help out. :)
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I think that the QO needed a custom volute but that shouldn't be too difficult - I get all the mods confused and I'd have to go back to the threads you gave me awhile ago. I'll be finishing up with finals tomorrow, so maybe we can find a time to do some pump modding this summer. If the QO is too much, I can always just mod the Sedra that is already on my 6" euroreef. From what I remember thought, the QO was recommended for 8" body. Either way, it would be sweet to see if it could produce consistent performance - I think others over on RC may have been having problems with consistency.
 
I know that consistent results with the Sicce were hard to get based on the forums. Dirk has a BM skimmer with a Sicce meshmod, and he's bringing the pump to the meeting tomorrow so I can take another look at it and see how it's different than mine.

The Sedra mod is easy, I did it to my 9000. I've heard that Sedras aren't the best for meshmods, apparently a good meshmod candidate has a large volume (diameter) volute in relation to the size of the impeller. But it still boosted the performance of mine big time.

I know that with either the QOs or the Lagunas, people were able to build custom volutes out of sections of 3" or 4" PVC. Looked like fun, but more work.
 
mattb said:
Did you read that thread on RC about them (Sicces)? I think the Quiet One pumps are very similar to them is what I recall (getting old)... It probably won't take too long to pay back... I thought they were getting 40lpm from them... Looks like a good decision though!
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They are a lot alike. I've taken parts from the QO and used them in the Sicce.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the comments/interest,

I just got done cleaning the tank glass of coralline algae, took about an hour. Since I got the Ca reactor running the coralline and corals are growing pretty well. I'm a little disappointed in coloration, I may try adding strontium. Essentially all the hair algae is gone. Cyanobacteria has disappeared. Some scary nuisance algae is in the tank though -- the large bubble algae and a couple different species of caulerpa. Not growing fast at all, but may be past removing, so I need to figure out a biocontrol approach. And a few aiptasia, but they don't seem to be spreading fast (but I'm wondering what the heck happened to the 3 peppermint shrimp I added a few months ago). No flatworms in the display, I think the green mandarin keeps them in check. I will try to take some photos of progress, and show progress photos of the frag tank system (but I may start a different thread for that).
 
cwk132 said:
MIKE WE NEED PICS. Saw everything a week or two ago and its looking great!!!!!!!!1!!1!!!!
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OK ok, :) The coralline needs a little scraping and I will try to take a few shots after I get it cleaned up this wkend. Not a ton of new stuff, other than a little school (dozen) small chromis and a sailfin tang from David G., and some coral progress photos.
 
My sicce uses 27 watts, and draws 40 scfh. I don't know what the coversion is to lpm, but their numbers were all based off of scfh. Anyone see the new octopus pro is getting around 60 scfh using a pin wheel? I kinda want it :).
 
wolmutt said:
My sicce uses 27 watts, and draws 40 scfh. I don't know what the coversion is to lpm, but their numbers were all based off of scfh. Anyone see the new octopus pro is getting around 60 scfh using a pin wheel? I kinda want it :).
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Do you know if the pin wheel impeller is available for the sicce for separate purchase? I'm disappointed with the air that mine is drawing with the mesh mod (and it still sometimes has startup problems), but the lower wattage has sure been nice.
 
I believe people are buying the tunze pin wheel impeller because ATI well not sell their impellers to people who are not registered buyers of their skimmers. I hear that using the tunze pin wheel in the sicce pumps people are getting 30 scfh. That's not that great when you think about the fact that you are paying close to $50 for the impeller. I have done all the mods on the sicce pumps, maybe I could help out.
 
I wonder if SWE could obtain just the Octopus pin impellers...? ;)
 
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wolmutt said:
My sicce uses 27 watts, and draws 40 scfh. I don't know what the coversion is to lpm, but their numbers were all based off of scfh. Anyone see the new octopus pro is getting around 60 scfh using a pin wheel? I kinda want it :).
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I don't think they're getting 60 scfh.... The octopus states that they are pulling in 1050 lph, which is pretty close to 40 scfh. I've heard closer to 50 with the mesh....
 
morty said:
Do you know if the pin wheel impeller is available for the sicce for separate purchase? I'm disappointed with the air that mine is drawing with the mesh mod (and it still sometimes has startup problems), but the lower wattage has sure been nice.
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Do you have a pic of your mesh? My guess is that there is some contact with the outer part of the inner pump.... People have reported startup issues with the sicce's and mesh...
 
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