Aquatic Life Internal Mini Protein Skimmer 115

Not the best pic of the foam it puts out, but I don't think I'll be getting dark skimmate untill I load up my tank. The only load in there now is 40lbs of cured live rock. This is 2 days worth of skimmate. The tip of the column has become quite dark though.

 

maybe i should give this skimmer a shot on like a 15g or a 10g

 

Aye!

@slocal - I still think that skimmate is too watery and clear - how is it doing now?

 

It's getting darker now that I've actually raised the water level in the column to allow all of the foam to go over. Before it was just watery from the bubbles in the column popping prematurely and shooting mostly water instead of skimmate in to the cup. I figured that was the problem because the foam wasn't going over the top of the column consistently and that the top half of the column was black as night with residue.

It still isn't pitch black, but it's much darker than it was before. The cup is also filling up at half the pace as well

 

Have you got it dry skim yet?

 

I don't know if it'll get dry yet. I'm going to be adding our first fish tomorrow, so we'll see after that. It does pick up some good "chunks" if that's what's considered dry.

 

Dry skimming is just getting really dark, smelly stuff. If it looks like the color of tea or beer, that is wet skimming.

 

Ah, then yes it would be getting the dark skim, albeit only at the top-half of the column. I've adjusted the settings and the skimmate is getting steadily darker in the cup.

 

I bought one of these skimmers from ThatPetPlace.com. I received and set it up on Thursday evening. This is the skimmate it had produced after tweeking on Saturday afternoon.

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Edit: I have this skimmer running on a 29 gallon reef tank with 2 Pink Skunk Clowns and 2 Dusky Jawfish (all under 2 inches), 2 Emerald Crabs, 2 Peppermint Shrimp, and 2 small Hermit Crabs. The Skimmer works very well but the valve is hard to turn when your hand is wet (I've been using needlenosed pliers, lol) and it kicks out a lot of fine bubbles in the tank but I put a sponge outside the outlet and that has helped a lot. ​

 

OK that is too cool. I think I may pick one of these up. I currently run a Rio Nano-Skimmer on my 10g and am only marginally impressed with it's performance.