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  • Results 1 to 6 of 6

    Thread: DIY small and short - no niche skimmer

    1. #1
      Nevermore is offline Senior Member
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      DIY small and short - no niche skimmer

      So with all the constant storms and rain we have been getting in the Ohio valley this year, my small pond was needing to be netted frequently... to frequently... of all the stuff that was blowing in.

      So needing a project… I started to look around for DIY no niche skimmers. Since I do have my pond tightly netted for heron protection, I don’t get large leaves…. Just bits and pieces and various stuff blown in from my gardens. I was planning on just putting something on a timer to running periodically through the day. There is an unused plant shelf area in my pond that would be easily accessible for clean out and I could hide it under my bridge.. Out of site. With it only being 12” deep in that area, the off-the-shelf no niche skimmers wouldn’t work. There are a few videos out there....so i got the idea... went to the big box store and rooted though all their PVC/electric/etc and came up with this guy.

      (This build is in progress so it’s not looking too pretty right now.. there’s foil tape on it… it isn’t glued up… isn’t sprayed black yet… the filter is on too long of a pipe... etc)
      The base part is a pvc floor box base… which is essentially just a short 5” pipe with a flat sealed bottom. There are capped pipe openings that branch out of the very bottom. My small pump is hooked to to one of these branches. It makes a nice base. The top is a 4” to 2” reducer with the 4” top portion cut off making a cone of sorts. This cone then will get glued to a 4” pipe fitting. The area between the cone and this outer fitting is currently filled with foam door insulation for buoyancy. The middle area that holds the basket is just a 4” coupler cut to length. This area could be lengthened if you had a deeper area to use this guy.

      I know nothing about skimmers.. But it seems to work well for my needs. My kid has tested all sorts of things on it so far. It brings down large poplar leaves…small twigs... floating beetles... small leaves with ants manning their helm. Since this doesn't have a large basket… it would clog up if got too many full size leave in it … but with my pond… I’m only dealing with smaller stuff. The only issue now is weighing it down and somehow boxing up the pump next to it or in another vertical capped PVC pipe next to it.... gotta make it reeeeeeal nice.

      Here's a video of it running.
      https://youtu.be/Um77vmJySRA
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    2. #2
      Kathy is offline Senior Member
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      Thanks for this! We have 3 cattle trough ponds (300g and 500g) for turtles and constantly deal with floating clumps of algae that we scoop off daily. No niche style skimmers are too big and the round walls of the trough make installation of a small pool skimmer impossible. Thinking of using a solar pond pump that's rated at 410 gph. Will give this a try. How's it working for you after 3 weeks?

    3. #3
      Nevermore is offline Senior Member
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      So far so good. I did have to sand the top floating parts collar to thin it out a bit since it was catching a bit. After that I glued it together, sanded it overall to smooth it out, and then painted it. I still need to make a housing of sorts for the pump though. And I ended up putting a weight into the bottom to hold it all down.

      It works great for my pond... almost too good though. I’ll run it for a few hours and within that time the surface is 100%clear. So I’m looking into putting it on a timer to just run for a few portions of the day instead.
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      Last edited by Nevermore; 07-25-2019 at 03:19 PM.

    4. #4
      Delhezi's Avatar
      Delhezi is offline Junior Member
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      any updates?

    5. #5
      Nevermore is offline Senior Member
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      Working well.... it gets all the leaf bits that make there way in through my net.

      Since the net over my pond is raised off the surrounding ground by 5 inches or so... big leaves are making their way in the pond and can quickly block this filter up... so I put in some additional netting to block those areas.

    6. #6
      Swalker is offline Junior Member
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      Looks good
      What’s your ponds surface area?
      I’m diggin a 5 x 7-9 ish this spring and I’m looking to make a skimmer for misc leaves, grass, etc.

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