Mickey,

Would my results change if I raised the pump off the bottom so that it was
pulling water uphill from the bottom drain? Would that help overcome the
pressure differential?

MSK

"Remydog" wrote in message
news:l%rkc.2967$0H1.305198@attbi_s54...
Thanks. I was thinking about that, also, but worried that I would then
have
the ring totally submerged all the time.

"Mickey" wrote in message
...
A few questions. Water is being pushed out the bottom drain by the
weight
of
the water. You have to create a suction of sorts to get the water to
flow
into the skimmer. That is why you have such an imbalance. I had one of
these
last year and moved on I did not have the best experience same as you.
What
you can try doing is making the four air holes at the top of the
floating
ring closer to the top (now you have less trapped air). As you have said
the
top ring floats and the pump has to pull water over. This worked for me.

"Remydog" wrote in message
news:sppkc.2780$kh4.176220@attbi_s52...
Last year I purchased an OASE no niche Biosys skimmer. I was operating
it
from my 1200gph Cal Pump and it barely worked, despite being rated as
operating at 1200.

I just upgraded my pump to a pondmaster 3600. The skimmer works
fantasticly
well when hooked up directly to this honker of a pump. It looked like
it
was
going to pull in all the fish and plants, it was so strong.

However, the moment I split the line to my bottom drain, the skimmer
pretty
much stopped. I even shut the bottom drain down to a trickle and the
darn
thing still is barely pulling surface water in.

The problem I see is the design. There is too much space between the
sleeve
and the float, so the flow of water between the two parts is such that
there
is not enough suction to pull the float ring down below the surface. I
could
possibly build up the sleeve with duct tape, but what a bother, and
who
knows how long that will last in a wet environment.

I've about had it with this thing, and wondered if others had a
similar
experience and/or if there is another design of no niche skimmer that
works
on much less water draw.

Remydog