I just spent the last 2 hours cleaning my protein Skimmer. It's an Ultra Reef UKS-160. I love the skimmer, but the Sicce PSK 600 pump that is included is a pain to reassemble. It uses the front cover to align the needle wheel shaft and because of the way the front has 1/4 turn threads it's a nightmare to reassemble. It's my least favorite part of tank maintenance. The magnet inside the motor constantly pulls the needle wheel shaft out of central alignment with the front cover. Then getting the keys on the front cover to engage with the threads on the pump is difficult. It's a really terrible pump design IMO.
The Sicce PSK 4000 has a much easier to reassemble design and no tools required:
I actually reassembled the whole thing, put it back in my sump only to find the needle wheel wasn't fully seated and had to pull the whole thing out again and reassemble to get the pump spinning.
After a couple extra minutes and a few f bombs, it's back in action. But the whole experience got me thinking...
Why doesn't anyone make a skimmers with an opaque, non-acrylic body. The large commercial skimmers are made with HDPE bodies and these would prevent coralline and other algae from taking hold inside the skimmer. I imagine they would be much cleaner and look a lot cleaner too! I realize the purpose is to be able to see the bubble production, but in practice that doesn't really work as it gets filthy really quickly due to my refugium. My skimmer gets covered in coralline algae in about 2 months.
I want a company to produce me a mini version of skimmer like the MRC or RK2 skimmers!
The Sicce PSK 4000 has a much easier to reassemble design and no tools required:
I actually reassembled the whole thing, put it back in my sump only to find the needle wheel wasn't fully seated and had to pull the whole thing out again and reassemble to get the pump spinning.
After a couple extra minutes and a few f bombs, it's back in action. But the whole experience got me thinking...
Why doesn't anyone make a skimmers with an opaque, non-acrylic body. The large commercial skimmers are made with HDPE bodies and these would prevent coralline and other algae from taking hold inside the skimmer. I imagine they would be much cleaner and look a lot cleaner too! I realize the purpose is to be able to see the bubble production, but in practice that doesn't really work as it gets filthy really quickly due to my refugium. My skimmer gets covered in coralline algae in about 2 months.
I want a company to produce me a mini version of skimmer like the MRC or RK2 skimmers!