anyone using a skilter?
 

I am 2 months into my first sw tank and my lfs suggested I buy a 250 skilter he has for sale. It is apparently a skimmer and a filter built together. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with one of these. Sounds very cool but I don't want to wast my money if it is crap

It is a piece of crap. Not really a skimmer. I have one from about 10 years ago, and I took the "skimmer" part out, and modified it into a fuge for one of my small tanks. Then the motor died and I threw it out.

How big is your tank? I could reccommend a skimmer for you that isn't too expensive. The AquaC Remora line is the lowest quality I would reccommend. Anything less is a waste of money imo (like Prism, BakBak, SeaClone, Coralife).

Oh, and don't listen to the guy at the LFS anymore. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He was trying to make money off a newbie. Good move asking here. Find a better LFS to go to. :)

Good advice.

I had one worked not bad as a skimmer but it was very noisey.
Get something different
The red sea prizm skimmers are good

This "might" skim something on a 5g nano, but it's not really a real skimmer.

I'm going to have to disagree Brad :lol:. Have you used the unit personally? I havn't but from the discription it sounds like its an okay unit and for a price of $34.99 it wouldn't hurt to try it. In essence its a HOB aquaclear 55 with a small skimmer built it.

It depends what goldie is using it for, if its for a nano then it would work excellently, just replace the filter floss with live rock rubble and you have all 3 types of filtration occuring in one cheap set up. Little fast to just shoot it down with out knowing the intended use.
Levi

The price has gone down. When I bought mine 10 years ago it was $90 on sale with a lot of dust. I should have known better w/ all the dust on it. For $35, I'd rather spend that on an AquaClear. The cartidges are expensive for the Skilter, but if you filled it with lr rubble it may be a decent little filter. Don't expect it to skim much...on any size tank. Mine skimmed VERY hit and miss, was a pain to tune it in, and would lose its tuning easily. When it DID skim it didn't produce much, and the skimmate was just light tea colored. It was pretty useless as a skimmer. The Skilter isn't powerful enough for a 55g either...like nowhere near. Try maybe a 20g max.

Levi, a good friend of mine used one when they first came out, so I do have personal exposure to them, and no, they do not work well at all. IMO, a seaclone is way better, and we all know how well they work (yes, I owned one of those).

Oh beleive me I know that Seaclones work about as well as Heath Ledgers sleeping meds. did. I wonder if you could convert this unit into a nice HOB fuge? It looks alot larger than the aquaclear and could be modded fairly easy, for $34.99 its worth a try.

the tank is 33 gallons. My aquaclear just died and I had been meaning to buy a skimmer so I thought this might be perfect, but maybe I might be better off just getting a new aquaclear and a decent skimmer. I found someone selling a used red prizm for $40. Do you think I need an aquaclear with that. I was told in the beginning that I woudn;t even need a filter with live rock...but the idea kinda freaked me out being an old freshy.

An AquaClear is nice on a sumpless system because you can use it to run carbon or GFO. Carbon and GFO don't mix well though because carbon likes high flow and GFO likes slow flow. It's also good for having a sponge in there just to catch particles. BUT, you don't it. I don't have one on my sumpless 33g. Just an AquaC Remora. Don't waste $40 on a Prism skimmer...they suck. If you really want to spend that $40 get an AquaClear and save up your money for an AquaC Remora.

skilters are like miracle mud. Good theory but they just don't work in practice. I had one and it was real noisy. I did most of the mods on it and it was still noisy and didn't work. I swear I would have had more skimmate with just an airstone in a piece of PVC or something.