attention octopus skimmer owners

[d.french]

soon different vendors will be carrying pinwheel impellar upgrades for the octopus nw skimmers, i plan on ditching my needlewheel for pinwheel for better performance so i know for sure cause i talk to jason at premium aquatics and he said they will have pinwheels for the OTP 2000 pumps but will take awhile before they get ones for OTP 3000.

 

[ccCapt]

Do you have a Kill A Watt meter? or Dwyer air meter? I would be interested in seeing the difference the pinwheel makes for either or both.

 

[d.french]

no i don't have a meter but i will post pics whenever they come in.

 

[Stupidsreef]

I don't any any issue's with mine. But if I had the chance, I'd try the pinwheel to see what it did.

 

[ccCapt]

If you saw any of the Octo mod threads on RC, I did the full mods on my Octo NW200. The stock OTP3000 pump pulls about 8 SCFH at 65w. With the mods I did, I'm at about 25 SCFH at 58w. So now the pump is putting more air into the skimmer and using less power. I would like to see what diff the pinwheel makes, but not enough to buy one...lol
Can't complain with these results. :)

 

[Stupidsreef]

Yea I did the O-ring mod & drilled the valute's out. I don't know what mine pulls, but I don't have any complaints either.

 

[ccCapt]

Did you bore out the elbo and mesh mod the impeller too?

 

[Stupidsreef]

Yes I bored out the eblo. But no I did not mesh mod the impellers. I viewed them and decieded to leave them the way they are.

 

[d.french]

got my impellar ordered, thinking ordering some spare parts so i can drill air hole out bigger for more air so i can see how much i can get out of this skimmer.

 

[Stupidsreef]

French did you get the pinwheel ordered from Jason over at PA??

 

[d.french]

yup, i think it shipped today.

 

[ccCapt]

got my impellar ordered, thinking ordering some spare parts so i can drill air hole out bigger for more air so i can see how much i can get out of this skimmer.

Are you using the stock venturi? If so, I can take pics over the weekend of the venturi I made. It works 100x better than the stock 1.

 

[d.french]

yes, i want to try different one, i seen on rc on octopus skimmer mods someone used pvc with bigger I.D. so they got better flow and drilled for bigger airline. but please show me some pics, not sure if mine is same as yours i have the first model of extreme octopus skimmers.

 

[d.french]

my results will be different cause i have a bubble plate in mine.

 

[ccCapt]

With the model you have, the elbo is already bored, but the pump is the same and the venturi looks the same as the NW. If that's the OTP3000, the venturi I made will work nice on that and the best thing about it is you don't have to do anything to the stock 1. Take it off and save it and if the new 1 doesn't work as good, just put the stock back on.
I'll take some pics over the weekend. I haven't seen any of the RC mods done quite like I did mine...and I tried about every 1 of those venturi mods. You don't need to do anything to the pump or volute. It slides right over the pump intake.

 

[d.french]

my skimmer in pic above is older style extreme octopus 150 with otp 2000

 

[d.french]

got pinwheel in and bubbles are alot smaller but water flow is a little slower and had to raise riser tube about 1 inch higher than normal to get foam up the cup tube and was about 1 inch from going into cup. Now 2 hours later foam is going into cup now so i think this might have a break in period especially since i cleaned skimmer neck and cup and cleaned out air hole.

try to find thread on rc about octopus 150 mods but can't find it since search function never works. i bought a 3/4 female piece from hardware store that has alot bigger inside diameter than stock venturi piece which is about 1/2 inch, so i this weekend i'm gonna drill for bigger airline so i can pull more water and air, i seen some threads were few did this and pulled alot more air and actually had to cut down riser tube cause skimmer was pulling alot more.

 

[d.french]

ccCapt like to see pics of your mods if you have any.

 

[ccCapt]

Here's some pics.

Some pics of the pump. I bored out the elbo, ground down the volute cover, did the mesh mod and made my own venturi.

 

[d.french]

awesome thanks for pics, i got bigger inlet like yours but air didn't do good, but i didn't move it in that close to impellar either so i got to get to work and redo that real quick.