Alright so after a 24hours vinegar bath, the skimmer went in the sump. Looks very sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek
I dialed the pipe to 2 and it was at the right spot:
And the bubbles at the top were already brown. But then after feeding the fish, the bubble went down and hasn't returned upto the mark yet. Will wait till tomorrow to further adjust. And its throwing lots of microbubbles. A HELL LOT!
Anyway, lets talk a bit about the "noise factor" of this thing. I used a sound meter on my cellphone to grab the db of the sound at various locations for comparison. I am not going to say whether it is silent/loud. I will let you people be the judge
Just outside the sump:
Just for a comparison, just outside the WP40 (which others say is more silent than mp40):
The spot where my pillow remains (with the skimmer off):
The spot where my pillow remains (with the skimmer on):
So there's like 4/5db difference (keeps on fluctuating) which is, I would say, very little to be even noticeable. I am happy with the noise level. The vertex pump seemed to be more noisy to me.
I will report back once the skimmer breaks in.