roidan

movie clip of the foaming (please wait for the whole movie to be downloaded before playing it back properly...otherwise the movie staggers) MOV00847.MPG

foaming after the flocculent is added.

coming to 12hrs with the Aquacare in my 72 litre FOWLR, airflow maintained at a steady 240l/hr with the sicce extrema. Again no buildup of foam. Wonder issit my bioload is too low (3 fishes about 2.5inches long each) Tried to feed a cube of mysis last night, as well as this morning, to coax a response from the skimmer but to no avail. Last resort to check if the skimmer is working: I dripped some Seachem Clarity (Flocculent) into the tank and while the tankwater turned dirty-colour, viola, the skimmer kicked into action just as it did when faced with Bane's venom.

as mentioned earlier, when overdriven by 1262....top 2/3 of the chamber is dense and relatively fine bubbles....but this setting churns out alot of microbubbles at the skimmer discharge point. test on FOWLR with sicce extrema and then eheim 1262 and i will be done with this review

overdriven by eheim 1262 still could not coax it to foam in my system. will be bringing the skimmer over to the FOWLR for testing.

Pricewise may not be accurate but i am converting from this webstore: http://www.sewatec.de/Protein_Skimmers/Aqu...95a387d064d334f 1000V = 399 euro = 867.232 SGD (1 EUR = 2.17373 SGD) 2000V = 566 euro = 1,230.21 SGD 3000V = 677 euro = 1,471.14 SGD With these prices, the range seems to be rather expensive for casual hobbyists. At this price range of SGD800plus to SGD 1.5k, a reefer would be spoilt for choice over other skimmers that offer similar sized fine bubbles and yet bigger reaction chambers. While it is definitely better built and designed than weipro equivalents, one may be hardpressed to fork out this amount when there are other options around the same price range which i said earlier that would offer similar if not better skimming performance.

Chamber bubble density The picture shows the 2 different pumps being used. The eheim 1262 is used to overdrive the skimmer beyond manufacturer's recommendations. The sicce extrema is used to drive the skimmer around manufacturer's recommendations. Blue region denotes relatively high bubble density. Green region denotes medium bubble density. Red region denotes very low bubble density. First we look at the chamber on the left (eheim 1262), for almost the top 2/3 of the chamber, bubble density is rather dense but i noted that there is a great deal of turbulence which may actually work against the skimmer. Meanwhile, the bottom 1/3 green region has a medium bubble density. While this helps to make full use of the chamber by accomodating as many bubbles as possible, there is a great deal of microbubbles exiting the skimmer. Next, we look at the chamber on the right (sicce extrema), this is actually close to the scenario recommended by the manufacturer (220l/hr of air), whereby the venturi draws 240l/hr of air. only the top 1/3 of the chamber are dense fine bubbles, the lack of serious turbulence here plays a part in achieving seemingly denser and finer bubbles as compared to the overdriven chamber. the middle green portion starts losing bubble density and by the time you get to the bottom 1/3 of the chamber.....bubble density falls drastically as you can almost look through the chamber to the inner tube. But this actually means that you have much less microbubbles escaping the skimmer and probably what the manufacturer wanted and designed for. As such, if we use the skimmer with the pump and matching water/air flow rate as recommended by the manufacturer, we are actually only using about 1/3 of the 27cm tall reaction chamber that is less than 4inches wide. This is seriously the weakness of the skimmer that I see at this point in time. In terms of bubble fineness and absolute amount of bubbles....it loses out considerably to skimmers out there that has similarly fine bubbles that fully packs their much wider, taller and bigger reaction chambers. Iregardless of how effective this top 1/3 layer of bubbles are, it is a serious handicap of this skimmer if you are thinking of using it for large water systems or heavy load systems. But that said, it should be able to perform for systems without heavy loads or large water volumes.

picture of bubbles near top of chamber at 360l/hr of air suction

rather dense chamber....i shall comment about this chamber bubble density a little more later....

gave up.....switching over to eheim 1262. got 6l/min of air (360l/hr) from the venturi....shall see if it foams first or floods first

looking from top down... clean clean white white bubbling going on... either the skimmer is unable to pick up organics or the water column is already purely clean, which i doubt as my skimmer is still maintaining a constant foam.

till now no foam production with the sicce extrema..... i do not even see a dirtier layer of foam on top of the reaction chamber...just simple white bubbling going on. in awhile i will be changing to eheim 1262 to 'turbo-charge' it and see if there will be foam production, testing schedule brought much forward from now. personally i feel that my skimmer is not allowing this AquaCare to fully work its magic on the water. While my skimmer is maintaining a constant foam prior to the AquaCare, it is still maintaining the foam whereas the AquaCare is not building up foam. My verdict at this point is that I will need to bring this AquaCare skimmer to work on my FOWLR as the sole skimmer if we are going to see any chance of foam production.

picture of bubbles with sicce extrema on main system (240l/hr of air)

Managed to coax 4l/min (240l/hr) of air from the venturi..... skimmer not foaming yet.....i will leave it overnight till tomorrow morning before i switch over to the eheim 1262 for testing again. here's the schedule if all goes to plan: now till Tuesday morning: Using sicce extrema on my main system Tuesday to Wed morning: Using eheim 1262 on my main system Wed to Thurs morning: Using sicce extrema on my FOWLR Thurs to Friday morning: Using eheim 1262 on my FOWLR shall then pass the skimmer back to Superman to fly it back to the owner

Round 3 of testing: Outsump testing again.... Sicce extrema using as short a hose as i can.....end up using just slightly longer than 12inches of hose from pump to skimmer connection point. do note: this skimmer is now working on my 180gallon tank+80gallon sump together with my beckett skimmer in dual mode. If the skimmer does not skim either with the sicce extrema/eheim 1262, i will set it up for another round of testing in my 4ft FOWLR where i can afford to let this AquaCare skimmer be the lone skimmer.

"50ml of Bane's Venom.......actually just the skimmate diluted with water from my quattro lah " as i quote myself here... http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?...pic=30772&st=15

Thanks strat.... my sidekick ah.... Dispar Anthias lor....the boy-wonder

Justice League's Batman (aka World's Greatest Detective) at your service

Thanks bro... i do not want to bring direct comparison with other skimmers as i do not have other skimmers sitting side by side in the same tub, thus i only offer my readings and observation by virtue of the skimmer itself. whether another skimmer will fare worse or better than this skimmer is definitely not conclusive. at least with pictures and some write-up, it helps a prospective buyer more than looking at clean new skimmers in the websites

decided to measure the skimmate before it starts drying up...... wow..i was in for a surprise....while i cannot conclude the concentration/dilution levels in comparison with Bane's Venom....it seems that the skimmer stopped skimming because it pulled quite alot of it out.... in fact i put 50ml of Bane's Venom and yet i get more than 60ml of skimmate within an hour from this skimmer. Of coz this skimmate in reality is less concentrated since i cannot get more than what i have put in and it is inaccurate just to judge by the colour of the pictures....but it seems pretty good to me. Near-final impressions: While this is a small skimmer, it seems to be very fast in generating organic-laden foam. (either that or Bane's Venom is too potent for the skimmer not to foam ) It definitely does not possess the high air/water volume that some other skimmers can offer, but it is a pretty effective skimmer in its own right. The manufacturer recommends this for tanks up to 1000litres. But as i always say, their ratings are just a starting reference point as everyone's system is unique. If after using this skimmer and you get the low nutrient levels that you want, congrats. If after using this skimmer and you are still not satisfied, doesn't mean that this is a bad skimmer, it only means you need a more powerful one.

view overhead seems to show that it has picked up rather nasty stuff.... meaning it managed to pull up quite abit of Bane's Venom before the venom is allowed to deteriorate the water quality. But as to how much exactly it picked up, i will measure later when i can confirm that the skimmer is no longer able to foam anymore.

skimmer stopped foaming..... i have reopened the valve to near 220l/hr that the manufacturer recommendeds and see if it can start foaming again to remove remaining venom. Skimmer stops foaming because either: -it has picked up all the venom -it has picked up whatever venom that it can and not able to pick up the rest -other unseen reasons

assuming what you want are very low nutrient levels, a skimmer is considered to serve you well if it removes organics fast enough to give you the low nutrient levels you want. you are right. seeing skimmate does absolutely nothing much to tell if the skimmer is good enough or not.....a skimmer can skim out of the world gruesome stuff but there are more stuff out there in the water column that is rotting and is contributing to the high nutrient levels in your tank...similarly, a skimmate that is less gruesome may actually just mean that there are not much left in the water column to skim. check your nitrates as riot said, if your nitrate values are dropping after the use of this skimmer. That means that the skimmer is pro-actively removing nasties before the rest of your system takes over in the ANN process.....if the nitrate values are holding, that means this skimmer is just about as good, or as lousy, as your previous skimmer.... if the nitrate values rise, this means you are worse off with the skimmer than before, ceteris paribus. That said, whether you use a beckett or needlewheel or any forms of foam production method, if the skimmer is undersized, you are not going to do your reef any good. You can have a skimmer that is rated for gazillion litres of water...but if using the skimmer in your nano-tank still results in heavy nutrient problems, then obviously this skimmer is either not good enough (over-rated) for you or you have something seriously spewing nuclear waste in your system that even this gazillion-rated skimmer cannot handle. solution: change skimmer

about half an hour and already 1cm of skimmate collected... again the skimmate collected will not be of the same concentration/dilution level as the Bane's venom poured in.... 50ml of Bane's venom introduced may probably render anything from less than 50ml of skimmate collected to much much more ml of skimmate collected depending on the setting of the skimmer.... all we can know is that...whether 50ml or more (wetter) skimmate is collected in the end....absolute amount of Bane's venom remaining in the water column should fall and this will result in less venom in the water column at every single skimmer pass.

Do note that there are severe limitations to the Bane's Venom Test. So while, it is not conclusive over the performance of this skimmer, it will be an interesting experiment to conduct and observe. - I wouldn't be able to produce identical composition samples of Bane's Venom for future testing as every 'batch' will definitely be different and of different concentrations of organics - I do not know whether the skimmer has runned in or not and how long it needs to be runned in (although it did foam immediately upon addition of Bane's Venom) - I had to further reduce the air flow into the skimmer to prevent overflooding and over dilution of the skimmate collected by this skimmer. (thus operating well below manufacturer's 220l/hr of air) but also the manufacturer wun be expecting a user to dump or his tank inhabitants to generate 50ml of venom per 35litres of saltwater in an instant also - and many other limitations that i haven't thought about yet.