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Surface Skimmer for inflow pipe

dino21

Member
Joined
17 Mar 2020
Messages
321
Location
Derbyshire
Hi,

Just trying to find out how effective these Inlet pipe skimmers are and if they are quiet in use ?

Have currently got one of the APS skimmers, very effective ,quiet and gives some good extra circulation but rather unsightly in our small 60 ltr tank.
Its filtered by an Eheim cansister so one of these Inlet pipe types might be neater .


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I'm coming back and forth regularly on that topic. I want to use them because they are far less bulky and distracting than an independent skimmer. But each time I try, I have to give up because they are just not very efficient.
First, it is a trade-off between surface and bottom aspiration, and for skimming to be efficient you have to give up a lot of bottom sucking. Which means you lose a lot of the laminar flow that is essential for good CO2 distribution.
Second, it is very difficult to tune up precisely, and the tuning changes a lot with water level.
Last, you can't put a shrimp guard on it, otherwise the bottom sucking is so low that the skimming part gets too much flow and wobbles or get sucked down.
Last, I suspect the physics of it cause a lot of flow rate loss, because the flow in my tank is so much better without it.
In the end, my current position is to use an independent skimmer, or better yet (what I'm doing now) none at all, but with a powerful enough canister filter that the output Lily pipe is doing enough surface skimming on its own. I got rid of any skimmer two weeks ago and so far things seems to be better or similar (except I have some leaves debris on the surface, but I can get rid of that easily). To be fair though, a lot of experienced aquascapers like Dennis Wong "don't run a tank without" a skimmer. But they do so to be able to inject a lot of CO2 in their tank, which I'm not good enough to handle properly.
Hope this helps :)

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Here is a picture showing how well the Lily pipes skim the surface: the bubbles you see aren't CO2 bubbles coming out of the pipe. They are oxygen bubbles coming from the right (from a Chihiros doctor), just below the surface, that are sucked down the pipe and then spat out forward and down the water column.
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Thanks, so sounds like those little skimmer tubes are more trouble than they are worth; it was their small diameter than made us dubious.
As for the Chihiros doctor, well not heard of it before, just watched a ytube on it and the idea seems interesting, though perhaps hard to evaluate how effective they are, as the video said its to kill the spores, not to treat any existing algea, so ideally for use in a new tank ?
 
Thanks, so sounds like those little skimmer tubes are more trouble than they are worth; it was their small diameter than made us dubious.
As for the Chihiros doctor, well not heard of it before, just watched a ytube on it and the idea seems interesting, though perhaps hard to evaluate how effective they are, as the video said its to kill the spores, not to treat any existing algea, so ideally for use in a new tank ?
Yeah. I've had them in several tanks and had several tanks without them... Can't tell for sure that they are efficient. They look cool though, and the thing they sure add is some oxygen. Some drawbacks : it's easy to break them if you fix them lower than the water line (water trickles up then down the cable to the electronics ). I've fried 3 like that (yeah, I'm dumb). The electrode catches clogs very quickly with water minerals. In my tank with ppm200 I have to clean them every damn week (but with citric acid it's super easy to do) which means they are half as efficient at the end of the week (you can see it, they produce far less bubbles).

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In my tank with combination of the eheim 2217 they work perfect :)
Really like them in use. And also very easy to clean because of the simple shapes and parts you can remove.
But with more powerful filters you need to watch out cause the floating part of the skimmer will get sucked down.
 
I’ve tried a few different skimmers over the years and none of them worked consistently well. Some have worked ok for a while and then stopped skimming for one reason or another. They also seem to need to be kept clean but even this doesn’t guarantee success. I’ve even seen tanks in shops with weirs and the water was happily sliding over it with the bio film still in the tank.
 
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