****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I love the SCA Skimmers, I currently have the one I recently bought running on a 50 gallon with a 20 gallon sump so about ~60 gallons total water volume. This thing pulls out more stinky thick skimmate than my $600 skimmer! In my experience they work best in 7 inches of water, the instructions are non existent so a bit of previous experience with skimmers helps, but just looking at a picture of one already set up would probably help. The water level in my sump is 9 inches, I had a friend 3D print a skimmer stand 2 inches tall so it sits in 7 inches of water and it's PERFECT at 7 inches. I ran it in 9 inches of water for about a week while I waited for my friend to have time to print the Skimmer stand and during the time it sat in 9 inches of water it pulled VERY watery tea like skimmate, but after setting the Skimmer on the stand it very quickly started pulling thicker almost black mud like skimmate so it definitely performs best in 7 inches of water. You will need to experiment with the blue tube, twisting the blue tube is what changes the water and bubble level in the skimmer body. If you look closely there is a small dot or indentation on the tube that's your "marker", I used a Sharpie to make the little dot indentation more pronounced so I could see it much easier, and I currently keep the marker between the 2 and the 3 but closer to the 3, you will likely need to experiment and slightly adjust until you find the sweet spot which may change some over time until the Skimmer breaks in. Once it has broken in just keep your marker at that spot at all times, no need to ever change it once you've dialed it in. A good peice of advice: keep the bubble level right at the bottom or opening of the collection cup! If the bubbles are visible through the collection cup it's probably a bit too high and you'll get really wet skimmate, you'll get best results with the bubbles right at the bottom of the collection cup but not quite entering the round opening of the collection cup. I added a picture of the bubble line to help see what exactly I mean by the bubble line, you want the bubbles to be right at the opening of the collection cup and no higher unless you are wanting very wet skimmate. The bubbles will slowly push themselves up over the top even though it may not look like the bubble level is high enough it is. Set the bubbles at this line and after you've broken in the Skimmer you will start pulling very dark skimmate. I believe these Skimmers are underrated and the people complaining about them and having issues just haven't head a Skimmer before, the tank is still too new to pull out any skimmate or haven't given it a chance to break in or aren't adjusting it right and slowly enough. When you set up a new Skimmer you will need a bit of patience the first few days or so until you find the sweet spot for your tank, every tanks needs are different. If you just need a Skimmer that does what it's supposed to do but you don't want to spend an arm and a leg there's nothing better out there and I've had reef tanks for nearly two decades and have owned the cheapest to some of the most expensive Skimmers out there and I can say there's nothing better out there for the price
