Cedric

Hi, bought this skimmer to replace my tunze 220 last year and decided to share with everybody the pros and cons. The picture shows how it looks fresh out of the box. Pros: 1) The workmanship is very good, the entire body is made with acrylic and not some cheapo plastic. 2)The skimmer comes with this air silencer and adjustment thingy by the side. This allows for fine adjustment of air flow. 3) The pump is joined to the skimmer body via pump to union, union to clear pipe, pipe to elbow, elbow to pipe, pipe to union and finally union to skimmer body. All these pipings and joints seems like high quality stuff! 4) There is also a knob by the side to control the flow of the water exiting the skimmer which in turns control the water height in the skimmer. Really Neat! Cons: 1) The pump is an Atman 3000l/hr 60watt powerhead. Too power hungry for my liking. 2) The bubbles produced are fine and the chamber fills up with white foam. However, I feel that the bubbles still seems to be bigger than those produced by needle wheel or spindle wheel impellers. 3) The union joint is glued to the pump and impossible to remove!The union joints used here are so good that I cannot find it here in Singapore! I tried looking for it coz I'm worried the atman pump may not last long enough. Secondly, I may like to upgrade the pump. Conclusion: The skimmer took me 3 days to break in. Now its producing black Kopi-O! Just glad that I made the right choice to swap out the tunze for this coz I feel that my tunze is undersized for my tank. Apologies for not taking a pic of it with the kopi-O coz I dun have the digi cam with me any more. Cheers!

Maybe I can try to help. 1. is it true that coral sand help GET RID of nitrate problem while coral chip ADD to it? No it is not true. Unless you are trying to create a dsb (deep sand bed) which the few bags you bought will not be enough. 2. LFS also recommended that I buy a bottle of AZ-NO3. Anyone heard of this product? Is it any good? Yes, the good news is AZ-NO3 works. The flip side is that you must have a good skimmer to go with it as AZ-NO3 extracts the nitrate out of water and requires a skimmer to export it out. 3. What is the difference between coral chip and coral sand? Can I say that coral sand is crushed coral chips? Any gurus can correct me. 4. I have 4 rocks of macro-algae in my sump/refrigium. What other ways to get rid of nitrate naturally? Naturally? I can think of a few, algae scruber, dsb, refugium and lastly but not naturally is to use a denitrator. Oh yeah, water change? But I dun quite believe water change is good enough to remove NO3. 5. How will I know when is it absolutely safe to put in fishes and corals? After you have completed cycling your water. This takes about 3 weeks or more. You can confirm it by testing your water for NH3/NH4, NO2 which should all read zero. NO3 are better tolerated by fishes than corals.

Here it is. MACRO Products

CAn let us know the address of this shop?

Tangs are notorious for being ick magnets. UV will help to a certain extend. However, most aqurists use undersize UVs.

The red colour thingy is a feather star. Very hard to keep so refrain from trying. The Big "mushroom" thingy from pasir ris farm is also a leather.

Hi, there is actually a simple test to see if your carbon needs replacing. Get a white piece of plastic, get a yellow marker and draw a line on the plastic. Insert the plastic into the water. You should be able to see the yellow line. If you cannot see the yellow line, its means your water has yellowed quite alot and its time for you to replace your carbon. Cheers!

I have both a flame and bi-colour in my tank. In my experience, they have a habbit of just nipping at any and everything. So, in order to stop them from nipping, I decided to keep them well fed. This method has managed to control their nipping habits, however, my angels are a little overweight!

Turbo skimmer? Intertesting! Would you mind sharing where did you got it from and how much is it?

Thats all for the day, tired liao...

More wiring

Some pics of the wiring

The sump tank with view of the pH controller, the effluent from the calcium reactor and denitrator.

The refugium with its 4 feet fl hood.

Top of the tank, lit by a 1.5feet fl at the moment. Still waiting for the MH hood.

Hooked up the co2 to a jumbo size life time supply cannister, solenoid to the two calcium reactor.

Another view of the chiller

Did some sawing and place the reef relief titanium chiller under the tank.

Some more updates. Brought one stream out into the main tank as the three streams together are pushing too much water out from the overflow compartment.

Oh that one, my friend wants a dsb in the centre which will not be disturbed. The surrounding will have a much lower height of sand mostly to look "nice" and easier for maintainence.

Oh well... to each his own.

No no, the overflow wall is one piece acrylic siliconned onto a glass wall. And the two smaller holes are to draw water into the overflow compartment, coz the three streams are pushing all the water out from the overflow compartment. Sheesh, do I make any sense to you?

Yup, Fuel, you're right! The flow through the refugium is very slow and gentle, much much slower than the flow through to the skimmer. The flow through the two overflow pipes are regulated by valves. Slow through the refugium, fast through the skimmer, both flow combine in the sump and return to main tank. Skimmer brand is Riowell

Thanks for your concern. No doubt filtration wise it may not seem 100% efficient, however, the flow out from the overflow compartment to the skimmer and the refugium is still very high so water is still bing filtered. Thanks again!

Oh, THe tank maker cut the slots on a piece of black acrylic and then silicon it to the glass.