I was having a lot of trouble with my hang-on excaliber so I hit up the LFS to see what they had for skimmers. They were running a special on all of their skimmers making a Pacific Coast skimmer an exceptional value.
The PS100P is an in
sump skimmer that's 3" in diameter and 15" tall(includes cup). Its powered by a Rio1700(or 1400) with a
needle wheel. There's a clever internal cup in there that contains the initial burst of air and water so that it has to go up rather than down and out.
Adjustment is handled by a ball valve.
The cup is non threaded(pulls off).
There is a hang-on bracket for hanging to the side of a sump.
The actual footprint once you look at plumbing and pump guards is roughly 6"x6".
So I set it up in the new sump I was preparing, hanging it to the side of teh ten gallon and plugged it in. The thing is loud and the gurgle of air was very apperant. I put an air silencer doohickey on it that I had left over from my excaliber and quieted it down to reasonable levels. It is by no means quiet. I adjusted the water flow to the level of the cup and after 24 hours I've got about an inch of dark water with some really nasty skimmate forming. Its pulling more stuff in a day than my excaliber would pull in two weeks.
There are a lot of microbubbles, even with the silencer cutting down on the amount of air. I've got a bubble trap in the sump that resolves the issue.
The cup is an absolute bear to remove. Although once you've got a death grip on teh skimmer and the cup it doesn't take much room to remove. This is the weakest part of the skimmer, depending on how you feel about RIOs. I think that it is critical to be aware of the force you use to remove the cup if its hanging on a glass sump.
It skims like an animal, but you inject that much air and water into a column and you're going to irregardless of a lot of other considerations. I will probably change the pump to a Maxijet 1200 with venturi in the future.
Chris
