Surface skimmer or power head

[Familyman2010]

Wondering everyone’s thoughts on whether a Rhein surface skimmer is considered essential

 

[Familyman2010]

Wondering everyone’s thoughts on whether a Rhein surface skimmer is considered essential

Sorry eheim

 

[Wolf89]

Its not essential, no. Beneficial, yes. You need some sort of surface aggitation, but people usually use powerheads of return lines.

 

[lavoisier]

Surface skimming and surface agitation provide two different benefits. Surface agitation helps with oxygenation while surface skimming removes organics (which float to the surface). Skimming is accomplished most efficiently with a weir. C2C weirs are the most efficient but if you don't have a return weir that removes the organics then you'll have to make due with agitation. Surface skimmers such as the one you are looking at don't actually skim but agitate.

 

[Vinh]

I just added the Eheim Skim 350 to my sumpless 13 gallon long and I can say within minutes it cleared everything up. It was more powerful than I had thought so had to put it on the lowest setting. I have an oversized HOB on one end of the tank and a powerhead on the other end. I removed the powerhead because the Eheim together with the HOB produced plenty of flow. I run it without the included filter and let my HOB filter do the rest of the work. I read about that idea from a different forum. Removing the skimmer filter means there's no need to clean it during weekly water changes. Before I had plenty of surface agitation but it didn't eliminate the surface film. The Eheim worked great. For a low-tech sumpless system I can definitely recommend.

 

[Familyman2010]

I just added the Eheim Skim 350 to my sumpless 13 gallon long and I can say within minutes it cleared everything up. It was more powerful than I had thought so had to put it on the lowest setting. I have an oversized HOB on one end of the tank and a powerhead on the other end. I removed the powerhead because the Eheim together with the HOB produced plenty of flow. I run it without the included filter and let my HOB filter do the rest of the work. I read about that idea from a different forum. Removing the skimmer filter means there's no need to clean it during weekly water changes. Before I had plenty of surface agitation but it didn't eliminate the surface film. The Eheim worked great. For a low-tech sumpless system I can definitely recommend.

Never thought of that. I switched out the filter it comes with and replaced with a carbon filter for alittle while to see if clarity of water would improve. To me it didn’t make much of a difference so I removed the skimmer and replaced with a power head.

 

[Vinh]

I'm surprised it's not working for you. I suspect it's working extremely well for me because the flow of water directs everything to the Eheim. Not sure if this is the case but you may have better luck if you're able to move things around so that the skimmer doesn't have to fight the flow. The Eheim is pretty strong but I suppose it may not work well if it's not in a good position.