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how often do you clean a surface skimmer?

brhau

Member
Joined
10 Jul 2020
Messages
152
Location
San Francisco, CA, USA
Hi, I recently got an inexpensive surface skimmer that runs water through a small, course filter, about 1 cm thick. I run it maybe 10 minutes a day. For those with similar setups, how often do you clean it?

Thanks
 
I don't think I ever have, maybe once every couple of months when I'm doing a deeper clean.
 
Hi, I recently got an inexpensive surface skimmer that runs water through a small, course filter, about 1 cm thick. I run it maybe 10 minutes a day. For those with similar setups, how often do you clean it?
When it's no longer flowing properly.
 
I’ve got the Eheim 350 skimmer and I clean it once a week on WC day. It takes about 2 minutes to remove, clean and replace.
I personally wouldn’t want to leave it much longer as it’s purpose is to trap waste from the tank, that waste will then rot and circulate round the tank which is not ideal!!
It’s good practice to keep it clean as you would (or should in my opinion) all filtration
 
I’ve got the Eheim 350 skimmer and I clean it once a week on WC day. It takes about 2 minutes to remove, clean and replace.
I personally wouldn’t want to leave it much longer as it’s purpose is to trap waste from the tank, that waste will then rot and circulate round the tank which is not ideal!!
It’s good practice to keep it clean as you would (or should in my opinion) all filtration

+1 This. Treat it as any other mechanical filter trapping biological waste and clean it frequently enough to prevent that waste dissolving into the water column. I always cleaned mine weekly when I cleaned the canisters pre-filter.
 
I have Eheim 350 skimmer on both my high tech tanks. I have them running 90mins on them 10mins off from lights off to CO2 on, allows shrimp to escape, from CO2 on till lights off they are on all the time.
Tanks are a few years old lots of plants and they NEED weekly cleans. I use to them less often and failed to clean one before going away for a week, Skim got clogged-failed to skim- surface skum-high [CO2] killed all livestock in tank (thankfully only had shrimp in there) sorted snails out as well.
Plus its so quick and easy to do.
 
I use a APS skimmer and it gets a weekly clean, I also replace the filter floss inside every week on water change day. So quick to do and they do catch a lot of crud.
 
Also have the larger 350ltr APS surface skimmer, change the little floss filter twice a week and perhaps every 3 months remove to give it a thorough clean by soaking overnight.
Like them so much , as they have the quietest pumps we have ever had and so cheap, we got a second one, so we just whip the dirty one out and pop in the new clean one using a quick release power connector.
 
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