Rio Nano Skimmer
 

Well nano keepers out there. There is a solution for skimming your under 20 gal tanks without spending $60+++ on a skimmer.

Enter the Rio Nano Skimmer. Interesting design, think of an aquaclear200 filter with and plastic rod in the intake tube. Needle wheel impeller and adjustable water intake, air intake and water outlet. Throw in a small carbon filter to polish the water and for $30CAD you have yourself a great little skimmer for your nano.

Bought one of these unit at Gold's aquarium in Calgary, on Saturday and after bringing it home, giving it a good scrubbing, set the nano up on the 8gal aquagiant cube.

Within 12 hours the skimmer was starting to produce bubbles that climb the neck on the chamber. A little bit of fine tuning and tonight after 36 hours running the skimmer is producing a light tea color wet skimmate. Little more tunning (ok honestly - just screwing around trying to figure out what works best on this unit:biggrin: ) and the bubbles are fairly consistentand a darker skimmate is starting to collect. Will check again tomorrow night to confirm I got the dark, dry skimmate I like to pull rom my tanks. No microbubbles from the skimmer into the tank, rare from a HOB type skimmer.

There are a few quirks to this skimmer. Like first off, you pull it from the box and notice a light oily film over the inlet tubes and collection cup. Easily fixed by a good scrubbing prior to setup. Getting use to the tunning has a learning curve but not as steep as the coralife super skimmers. Actually its really simple once yo get the hang of which adjustment has what effect. Second the needle wheel impeller is fairly noisy. I read this can be fixed but super glueing the impeller to the magnet shaft, but haven't done this yet (figure I will wait for the first scheduled cleaning to do this). AndyL may chime in here as he did the impeller mod. Last getting the right amount of water to bubbles to get the crap climbing the collection tube wall is annoying but once you get it set, you can pretty much ignore it.

Now AndyL, was having issues with the inlet tube losing water pressure. I have not had this problem, so its not all units. Mind you AndyL is known for being able to burn water, so its no suprise he found issues where most will not.:biggrin:

Side note the unit comes with a large collection cup, figure a little larger than the Remora Aqua C collection cup. This should help keep the water in the tank and not overflowed or flooded onto the floor, desk, counter, etc....

Quick summary: HELL of a bang for the buck.
You will not get better skimming or your nanos for less money than these little units. Added bonus can be used as a plain filter aswell. If you are looking for a cheap skimmer for your nano here it is. Prices should be around $30CAD.

Paul thanks for the excellent review.
My water volume has grown out of the nano range, but I'm sure this will be useful for a lot of the members here on the board.

- Chad

I've never set water on fire... Electrify it, yes, Use it to make sparks and pretty flames come out of power bars... Yes!

Couldn't retain suction, because I put it together as it came outta the box - just needed to rotate the base on the U-Tube, so the one wasn't blocked.

Gotta do the impeller mod - damn that's annoying! Superglue the magnet to the needlewheel; solves the noise.

(sorry bought the last one, dennis said he was getting more in)

No idea on performance, hasn't even been running 5 hours, and at least 4 of those it wasn't moving water.

Neat little unit - got a few mods planned already for it, going to add a valve to add fine adjustment to the air intake.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=968288

I got mine tonight, my initial impression was not so good. The intake design is very much like the one you see with the Prizim series, a U-tube with a little gate valve on it for control. You have to block the air tube to prime it and it's sensitive to water level changes, I really hated that about the Prizim.

Having set it up and messed with it a bit I like it a lot better, it's a well constructed unit and moves quite a bit of water. The gate valve is easy to adjust and once I put the extension tube on it primed really fast. I'm getting a little bit of micro bubbles but it's pretty good for brand new. I also didn't have the oily residue that JSTR describes, just gave it a rinse in some hot water.

Performance remains to be seen but I really think you can't beat this model for the price.

Hey guys, great reviews :biggrin:

Would anyone happen to have the dimensions on one of these as well as the depth for the "hangon" part of the skimmer (my nano has eurobracing)? I can't seem to find any info on the net for that kind of stuff.

Thanks! :biggrin:

And where in Vancouver can you find one?:mrgreen:

Heh, that too :biggrin:

Check the Reef Central thread Andy linked to, somebody posted a pic with the dimensions.

24 hours later... No skimmate, but foam is starting to make its way up the riser tube. Noticing a fair amount of microbubbles now - hopefully those go away once broken in - if not guess I'll be looking for some foam.

24 hours in and I've got a good cm or so of green tea looking skimmate and some nice dry foam going. Micro bubbles are gone too, I'm impressed.