[alan_we]

As of today, we've added detailed product specs to all the skimmers in TRT Comparison Shopping. We are very excited about this because it brings a whole bunch of benefits:

• When looking for a skimmer, you can now narrow your search based on the skimmers' main characteristics such as Location (Internal, External, Hang on), Recirculating / Non-recirculating, Bioload Rating (Up to 40 gallons, 41 - 100 gallons, etc) Price range (Up to $100, $101 - $200, etc) and others.
• You can easily access the skimmers specs by clicking on the Product Spec Tab on a skimmers page. You will find a great amount of details there: Body Height, Footprint, Water level adjustment method, Type of air injection and more! You will also find (in most cases) a link to the manufacturer's user manual.
• From the specs page of a skimmer, you can then go back to look for more skimmers of the same brand, or in the same price-range, or of a similar bioload-rating, etc with just one click.

This enhancement wouldn't be going live today without the huge help from OneDummHikk. Randy asked me a few weeks ago how he could help and took over building the Protein Skimmers Specs database that feeds this new functionality. Thank you Randy!!!! :thumbup:

We will soon be adding this functionality to other product categories such as Pumps & Powerheads, Calcium Reactors, Light Bulbs and more. There are members helping put together spec databases for all these. If you'd like to help pls PM me and I'll be glad to give you more details.

Beyond rolling this functionality to other product categories, we are now working on allowing you to select a handful of skimmers and compare their detailed specs side by side. Again - another great way to understand what your options are before deciding for any particular product.

Two more quick things:

1. This is new functionality - as with everything new... there are probably bugs and there may be faulty data here and there. If you find something that is not working fine - Pls let us know using the contact us form.
2. You will notice on the Product Specs Tab of some of the products that the value for certain attributes says "Unknown" - Next to it there is a link through which you can help us complete that data.

Hope this will be helpful stuff to you all.

 

[SoK]

nice feature, will definately help out people new to the hobby. make sure they have customer reviews and ratings for each!

 

[umakemekissu]

That's awesome :blob: Thanks all who contributed! this function would help to search things more efficient! :agree:
Just one thing though.. i just tried it out.. and dont seem to find the most recommended skimmer brand, Octopus, on the list! is it hidden anywhere that i dont know about?

 

[OneDummHikk]

Octopus and MSX skimmers aren't listed. When I created the first database, I simply went through the Comparison Shopping tab at the top and listed what skimmers are listed there. Rather than trying to make it more complicated than it had to be, I didn't add any new skimmers to it. I left them off to get it up and running, get the wrinkles worked out, then start adding new skimmers rather than trying to do that all at the same time.

If you look in GRD there is a thread about Calcium Reactors. The info there is for the Calcium Reactors database. This time, it will have as many reactors as I can find listed from the start.

I know of Octo, MSX, MRC, and other brands that people would want to see, post them here and I will get with alan and add them.

 

[mscottring]

This is great! Thanks for all of the hard work that went into creating it.

 

[scoop]

I saw the 'specs' tab this morning - very helpful. Thanks!