Nano Skimmers

[VFX]

I ran a Tunze 9002 on a lightly loaded 20g for almost 2 yrs without any problems. It worked fine for me, pulling enough skimmate to fill a quarter of the collection cup every week & quickly pulling a cup's worth of really dark thick skimmate when one of my clams died.

It would sometimes appear to pull nothing at all when I've done a water change but, I put that down to lack of nutrients for it to work on.

I've also been running a Euro Reef Nano on my Solana. At first it took a few weeks to settle down properly & not over fill the collection cup within a few minutes.

Once settled down it would start to overfill the collection cup about once every few days until I cleaned out the foam at the base of the skimmer. I got tired of this so I removed the foam altogether which gave me about a week or so before the skimmer will overflow the cup.

After a few months of this, it now 3/4 fills the cup every day (I do over feed this tank & it's quite heavily stocked) but occasionally will overflow once the lights go out.

I have no idea why it overflows once the lights have gone out for an hour or so. Could the change in pH effect the running of the skimmer causing it to overflow?

Anyway, when it's working it's an amazing skimmer & 30% of the time, when it's not working, it's a complete PITA. At least it's pretty quiet.

I haven't tried the Bubble Magus, Warner Marine or Sapphire Nano Skimmers, but if I had the budget for it I'd go back to using my favourite HOB skimmer, the Deltec MCE600.

As it stands, discounting the MCE600 due to cost, I still haven't found a perfect Nano skimmer.

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