I had this thing for a few weeks before plumbing up my sump. I got all the plumbing done and installed it in a 30g sump wth a 125 gallon tank. The tank has probably 200lbs of live rock, 25-30 coral frags (mainly soft) and about 9 fish in it.
Prior to putting in the Mini-G, it was using a Seaclone 150 that came with the tank. They're not known as being great skimmers and I learned why. The Sea Clone has two cylinders, one inside the other. Basically, in the inner tube, bubbles flow up and water flows down. When water gets to the bottom, it comes around and into the outer tube (between tubes), up the length of the chamber and out to flow into the tank from above water surface. Downdraft...sounds good... but the first problem I found is that there just weren't enough bubbles in it. So, I added a wood air diffuser and air pump. This did add a lot more bubbles, and they were nice small bubbles. The problem still came down to the fact that the bubbles spend little time in the chamber before getting to the top. It was like I had poured a fresh coke on ice...tons of bubbles all popping and splattering as they reached the top. ...but they just hadn't caught much for organics. I feel that the #1 problem with this skimmer was that the chamber was not a large enough diameter. You simply can't get bubbles swirling around for the entire length of the chamber like you could with a larger diameter chamber. In other words, the bubbles took the shortest path to the top - straight up.
So I left the seaclone running because the Mini G would have to break in. Surprisingly, I had a little skimmate out of it in just a couple hours. I set the skimmer such that the line where bubbles started to accumulate was just below the cone. Skimmate was very slow and thick. It would have taken months for the skimmate to fill the cup, and it would have been too thick to pour out. Evaporation was taking moisture out of the cup faster than it was producing skimmate. I left it this way for a few weeks, thinking maybe it just wasn't a big producer. I eventually turned off the sea clone and saw no improvement in the amount of skimmate. I had given it enough time to adjust and I didn't like the results..time to try something else.
I raised the level about half way up into the height of the collection cup, and saw a difference over night. The skimmate is still plenty dark, but I'm getting about 1/2" of it a day now. The only drawback is that if I remove the collection cup, water spills out the top...but all I have to do is turn it off when I remove the cup.
My sump is set up where the water level would naturally be low to be controlled by the baffles, so I typically stay above that. Maybe one day when I rig up an auto top off, I will change that, but for now, I don't want to manually top off every day to keep the pump from sucking bubbles. The good part is that the skimmer doesn't seem to care how high the water level in my sump is either.
So overall, I think this skimmer is awesome!! It's quiet and runs flawlessly. Based on my limited experience, I think skimmers are very underrated, as for the number of gallons they say they are good for. For example, if this skimmer could effectively handle a 300 gallon tank, and they marketed it as such, it would bump a more expensive (and profitable) item from their lineup. I wouldn't be surprised if this skimmer could handle a tank 300 or more gallons.
I would reccomend this skimmer to anybody, but I don't want them to get too popular or the price will go up by the time I get my next one.
And thanks to Aquatic Marine for donating it for the frag swap raffle!! I think we're pretty lucky that the best LFS's in town sponsor the club with great support, prizes, and discounts.
Prior to putting in the Mini-G, it was using a Seaclone 150 that came with the tank. They're not known as being great skimmers and I learned why. The Sea Clone has two cylinders, one inside the other. Basically, in the inner tube, bubbles flow up and water flows down. When water gets to the bottom, it comes around and into the outer tube (between tubes), up the length of the chamber and out to flow into the tank from above water surface. Downdraft...sounds good... but the first problem I found is that there just weren't enough bubbles in it. So, I added a wood air diffuser and air pump. This did add a lot more bubbles, and they were nice small bubbles. The problem still came down to the fact that the bubbles spend little time in the chamber before getting to the top. It was like I had poured a fresh coke on ice...tons of bubbles all popping and splattering as they reached the top. ...but they just hadn't caught much for organics. I feel that the #1 problem with this skimmer was that the chamber was not a large enough diameter. You simply can't get bubbles swirling around for the entire length of the chamber like you could with a larger diameter chamber. In other words, the bubbles took the shortest path to the top - straight up.
So I left the seaclone running because the Mini G would have to break in. Surprisingly, I had a little skimmate out of it in just a couple hours. I set the skimmer such that the line where bubbles started to accumulate was just below the cone. Skimmate was very slow and thick. It would have taken months for the skimmate to fill the cup, and it would have been too thick to pour out. Evaporation was taking moisture out of the cup faster than it was producing skimmate. I left it this way for a few weeks, thinking maybe it just wasn't a big producer. I eventually turned off the sea clone and saw no improvement in the amount of skimmate. I had given it enough time to adjust and I didn't like the results..time to try something else.
I raised the level about half way up into the height of the collection cup, and saw a difference over night. The skimmate is still plenty dark, but I'm getting about 1/2" of it a day now. The only drawback is that if I remove the collection cup, water spills out the top...but all I have to do is turn it off when I remove the cup.
My sump is set up where the water level would naturally be low to be controlled by the baffles, so I typically stay above that. Maybe one day when I rig up an auto top off, I will change that, but for now, I don't want to manually top off every day to keep the pump from sucking bubbles. The good part is that the skimmer doesn't seem to care how high the water level in my sump is either.
So overall, I think this skimmer is awesome!! It's quiet and runs flawlessly. Based on my limited experience, I think skimmers are very underrated, as for the number of gallons they say they are good for. For example, if this skimmer could effectively handle a 300 gallon tank, and they marketed it as such, it would bump a more expensive (and profitable) item from their lineup. I wouldn't be surprised if this skimmer could handle a tank 300 or more gallons.
I would reccomend this skimmer to anybody, but I don't want them to get too popular or the price will go up by the time I get my next one.
And thanks to Aquatic Marine for donating it for the frag swap raffle!! I think we're pretty lucky that the best LFS's in town sponsor the club with great support, prizes, and discounts.
