Need Recommendations for protein skimmer, powerheads and heater

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:28:05 -0500, Add Homonym
wrote:

snip

I have heard good things about the coralife needle wheel skimmers, and
you sure can't beat the price. But I don't believe these will do as well
as an aqua C.
I wish there wa a really fair way to evaluate skimmers against each
other. Thing is its impossible to do unless both skimmers are in the
same tank, so what one person gets with one brand is quite variable
over what another may be obtaining.

When you r getting a collecitn cup of dark green black brown nasty
skim every day from skimmer "A". and also a cup of nasty junk from
skimmer "B" how is it possible to discern which one is better than
the other....BOth remove suitable amounts of nasty stuff....so it
really is hard to tell, which is really better A or B. but there is
little doubt if Skimmer C or make that Skimmer Sea Clone or Prism is
among those tested......I'll give sea Clones the benefit of the doubt,
they do work but reqwuire too much constant fiddliing with them to
consider them a set and forget type item as they wil bite you if you
try that with a sea clone.

I have had much better results with Lee's Counter-current skimmers
than I have with sea clones. Probably the best small skimmer
especially for use on a 10 gal is a Sanders Picollo skimmer. I have a
couple of them and they just work so good, and are so small. Hard to
find in ther USA, but are quite common in Europe.


Power Heads

Maxi Jet's

Agreed. And reasonably priced. Hagen's are nice, too.

are a very good powerhead, as is Tunze

Which are TOP of the line, IMO, but VERY expensive.

........RIO quality
is good one time and bad the next,

You must have bought my quota of the "good" ones - the ones I have had
all jammed up and refused to start within a month.

but if yu find a RIO that works and
lasts odds are it will be with yu for ever

Yeah... I suppose the key word there is "if"

Yes, that little word "IF" means a lot with a RIO. If it lasts 2 or so
months, odds are it will last forever......On those that do not want
to start back up what are they doing? Are they just sort of setting
there vibrating, but if yu bump em hard they run? If so, pull out
impeller. HOld magnet in one hand and grasp impeller blade inthe other
and wiggle it back and forth while pulling the blade off the stub
shaft of magnet. The impeller should snap off the stub shaft. What
happens is a bit of sand or grit gets in the "clutch" (factory has a
name for this back and forth play which has something to do with
enabling torque, but I forget the term they call it) and it prevents
motor from being able to start up against the pressure of water on the
impeller blades, in relation to where the magnetic fields are in
conjunction to the mag in the armature. Since these smallmotors can
run CW or CCW, this small amount of back and forth play allows them
to bump or start vibrating, and gives it a bit of help in starting up
against the water weight. You wil find this true of lits of the
smallhob and other powerheads as well. Hydor brand (Italy) are very
bad at getting stuck like this.



No one has mentioned MAG at all yet. I don't use them myself, but they
have a VERY good reputation from what I have heard.

When you say MAG is that as in MAG drive pumps (Pondmaster or DAnner
MAg drive pumps? I never seen a MAG brang powerhead, but a MAG pump is
good quality. OPnly diference in MAG and Danner POnd mAsters is the
length of the power cords.....same pump same specs...oh, the MAG
usually costs more since its sold in LFS for marine tanks.........Buy
em on line at discount pond suppliers for best prices, and cut that
long 18 or 20 foot powercord to suit an aquarium setup.





To trap deritus and watch your nitrates soar?


Yes, but the idea is not to leave any media in them longer than it
takes to remove coarse junk when the need arises, ot a plsace to put a
bag of chemi pure or purigen etc. I run em as a mini fiuge on lots of
tanks, but do not use any media in them unless I have a need to and
then its removed, long before its going to turn into a nitrate
factory.

?!? These are pumped via a powerhead that is flipped upside down and
stuck on the bottom of the box. You do get some air cooling that way,
but it won't be THAT much cooler that putting the same powerhead
directly in your tank.

I may have to try that with a powerhead I have. I have a spare MAXIJET
400 looking for a use....


Pounds is misleading - what is important is surface area. You can get
away with less poundage if you use more porous rock, which will be
lighter and have a greater surface area (due to the pores)


This is so true. LIve rock from different regions have deifferent
density. The lr my wife just pickedup is dense. Two pieces about the
sizes of 2 bricks weighted close to 10#. I have a chunk about 4 times
that size that barely goes over 8 pounds...LIghter is better which
goes in conjunction with porosity which relates to more surface area
internaly and externally. It would not be a problem adding 20# of
that high density rock to a small nano cube, but you would never fit
that same amount of less dense rock in that same cube. I have 16
pounds of rock in the cube right now, and thats about as much as is
gonna fit. I feel its perfectly fine even though its under the normal
1.5# per gal concept. Cube probbaly has close to 2.5# of rubble in the
back compartments though so that also helps, along with chaeto.

FIGI or Tonga or MArshall Islands is probbaly th eebst rock, as far as
density etc goes......Haitian and Caribean rock is much denser
overall. Still there is nothing wrong with it, but it may take more to
do what less will do of the other rock from the South Pacific areas.




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I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!