Performance is defendant on:

Salinity

you still have to add salt to your tank but not as much, i have some in my freshwater as it keeps stress down

from reading andrew's link the water has to be brackish or salt water. so unless you are adding somthing to the water to increase the surface tension I can't see a skimmer working.

Steve

All a pond skimmer does is clean up the surface of leaves and other debris before they sink to the bottom and decay. No foam or skimmate are produced.

Umm did you click on this link posted above: http://www.koicarp.net/filtration/pr...an_sander.html ?

You may want to go back and do that.

^^^ What he said (thanks Canadian)

That's not your "typical" pond skimmer and not the one I was talking about.

x2!

Fair enough :) But FWIW it IS the one *I* was talking about. ;)

I disagree with you there young fellow.. the bubbles you get with vinager are totaly different than salt water.. the bubbles from vinager are short lived and low surface tension, and what they are doing is imploding along the sides of your skimmer because they cannot maintain the bubble. this implosion is the same as cavatation and causes little tiny pits in the size of the skimmer scale, hence cleaning it. but this cleaning action is two fold.. first you have the implosions knocking the scale off the sides, then you have the acidic power of the mixture desolving it. it goes crazy when ou add more vinager as it start fizzing (just like when you have a viniger water mix they you cleaned a lot of pumps with so it is saturated with Ca and you add more viniger to that.. fizzes right up.

Steve

I'm confused? What's the purpose of this skimmer? I get using one for a large pond but as far as aquariums go isn't water cheap enough to easily do large water changes to reduce nutrients? The cost of the skimmer and the power it uses will never pay for itself or be as efficient as simply changing water.

There's a reason these are used in SW and not FW.