Well I said I was going to post up how I made my DIY protein / leaf skimmer. Had a lot of thin foam build up on my pond top and also wanted to clear away uneaten food easily, as well as the bit of debris that blows into my pond.
First of all I had a spare basin\sink strainer from when I renovated my kitchen, it's basically made of plastic and had the bit inside which the silver strainer part of a sink screws into. I basically just hack saw bladed the 3 of the 4 plastic supporting arms away and left the one arm that was attached to the centre screw in bit. Then on this same piece is a neck with thread, this has a normal piece that screws into this that has a 40mm pipe attached to it, I screwed this in together. Then on the top I added a black toilet floater ball, this is so as to keep the whole bit floating. In the pics below you can see the parts apart as well as what it looks like assembled. On the Y strainer piece I did have to saw away the some of the top.
Pics
Then at the pond side on the outlet from my bottom drain to pump I cut a section after my ball valve and added the following bit, you'll see this is normal 50mm piping
So I just place the end of the 40mm pipe attahced to my skimmer into the 50mm pipe, obviously it's quite loose which is what I wanted because as the water level drops or rises so does my skimmer, so it's not set at a set height so auto adjusts itself according to the water level...as seen in my pic below
I will have plants covering it in the not too distant future, where the leaves will be lying on the net above it so am not to worried about visibility.
With my water rotating etc my pond is finally crystal crystal clear and I know that this skimmer is helping quite abit with regards to that.
Thats about it......pretty simple and cheap to make!!
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