Neo Flow Premium - goodbye standalone surface skimmer?

[Garuf]

Okay, notes on operation after hacking at the pipes and getting them how I like them.
1, the long venturi pipe gives you a better surface clean and easier adjustment, it however puts the outake lower in the tank. A good compromise is to split the differnence between the two and chop 15mm off of it. This gives good draw and doesn't leave the outlet as deep in the tank.
2. the outlet that comes with removable gaurds churns the flow befor sending it through the tank, I have had to up the co2 as it rises faster to the surface rather than blowing round the tank. I they may move more water, but in a weaker way, probably good for a betta tank. An outlet like the cal aqua nano which I have found always produced quiet good surface would give a double venturi and provide even better surface skimming.
3, the filter gaurd outlet thing falls off, on all 3 of mine it just drops off, nothing a blob of superglue won't fix but if you have to run two, I can imagine the flow will likely just knock it off.

So scores on the doors are a very good 6 out of 10. The brackets I don't like and have swapped to suckers. the ability to aim the flow is nice, BUT, a lily pipe would really make this a 9-10. The cut easily but scratch easily. The thing looks fine but it's definitely aesthetically worse than a lily pipe.
Is it better than a standard surface skimmer? No, but it does work well enough that once the huge boon of it being plastic and highly choppable it is a totally servicable product. I'll add further thoughts once I've used them for more than 24 hours.

 

[Psfor]

As said above - careful tuning. Much easier than the standard EA skimmers (on the outflow). Once you've got it set the water level needs to be topped up in the heat every couple of days - there's no lid on my tank. My other lily pip skimmers have elastic bands on and needed more attention.

 

[Garuf]

So after a longer period of use here are my thoughts.
Positives:
Doesn’t suck leaves into the filter
Skims very well
O2 and off gassing of co2 increased so higher injection rates are easier and tank is more stable.
Stays cleaner longer than a lily pipe. Functionally breakproof
intake can be cut to any length - this one is a massive plus.
Water is drawn at “full pull” at the deepest part of the tank.
Adjustable flow direction another massive plus.
If you don’t use the skimmer you can use the dennerle scapers flow lily on the outlet.

Negatives:
Extremely fiddly to get set up more so the higher the flow rate.
Outlet with no diffuser tends to act like a jet pipe and in my tank blew sand and substrate around (eheim experience 150/250&2213 on 20 40 and 30l tanks)
Diffuser dulls the flow perhaps a little bit too much for some applications.
With higher flow I found it impossible to use the “short” Venturi pipe without it sucking air.
No lily or more conventional output adapter
Diffuser is sort of ugly.
Tank water level can only drop by a couple of Mm before it sucks air at a strong surface draw so daily small top offs are vital.
The float seems to make adjustment more difficult and is prone to blocking - moving to use without the float on the 40l made surface draw more consistent and easier to set at the loss of tiny fish/shrimp safety.
Diffuser isn’t fish safe with (very) small fish, the paddles that cause a turbulent flow have the effect of smashing the fish against them if they stray into the outlet.
Surface skimmer doesn’t suck leaves into the filter. I have included this in both because I personally find daily netting out leaves preferable to having them in the difficult to clean filter rotting there yet those who have easy clean prefilters may find this preferable.
Diffuser isn’t easy to clean and will fog if you use bleach so clean often rather than letting it get bad.

 

[Garuf]

It’s worth taking into account I’m using between 15-20x tank volume filters which I did to have redundancy/have filters to hand for bigger tanks when (not if) I up tank size so the jet pipe blowing stuff’bout likely won’t effect you like it does done me if your using 5-10x turnover that often is used as a bench mark for turnover.

 

[Noob-dude-scaper]

It`s not a bad set but has draw backs like most other surface skimmer sets,your basically exchanging one problem for another.
The whole set is compact and sleek, the inflow can be cut to suit the depth of the tank so no more inlet strainer sat at half depth. Having the strainer closer to the substrate catches more debris/dead plant matter.

It`s the design of the skimmer that`s the problem here, it can be a bugger to set but spending some time and you`ll get it spot on and once it is set you wont have to alter it.
The skimming idea itself is the fault, this skimmer just recycles floating matter back into the tank, yes it`ll break up any surface scum and blast it back into the water column and eventually said biofilm will be taken away with the strainer but its the floating debris that just gets skimmed off and blown back into the tank, over and over again so you`ll have to manually remove this waste, whereas the standard skimmer on the inflow will remove both biofilm and debris.

I`ve also noticed a huge increase in water evaporation due to the massive increase in surface agitation , a bonus on the increased surface agitation is an increase of 02 intake and my plants are pearling a lot sooner when lights come on as the water column is saturated with 02 , I`ve not increased Co2 input so the only other variable is the agitation and i can now see why folk love spray bars 😉.

I did a little video on YT on how they look in the tank so go have a look if your thinking of buying a set - Slinkyscapes.

 

[Tankless]

View attachment 171867

I've not connected it yet, just testing out the 'fit'. But I'm excited if this can really replace my standalone surface skimmer, thats one less piece of bulky equipment in my tank! The only downside is that it doesn't come with a Lily Pipe extension but fortunately I have a plastic Lily Pipe extender for my green Eheim outlet which I could just plug in. It will be connected to my Fluval 307 so hopefully there is enough flowrate to make the skimmer work.

Where did you get the lily pipe attachment from?