SSA ES2 cone skimmer (300g rated)

[ksicard]

I'm super excited for my new skimmer that will be arriving this friday, I wanted a more powerful skimmer that would be okay to keep if I were to upgrade to a larger tank and I ended up settling on SSA ES2 cone skimmer (rated for 300g). After talking to Seas side aquatics via e-mail to help make my choice this ended up being what I choose. I was originally going to get a BM NAC9 but after reading reviews about how loud they are they showed me this skimmer and was told it was dead quiet. sea side aquatics customer service has been excellent so far and I'm very excited to report back once I get my skimmer and break it in. It will be going on my 75g DT and I think it will run circles around my last skimmer. I'll be writing a full review on it, Just thought I'd get it started early.

 

[ksicard]

I received my skimmer about an hour and a half ago. First impressions: the skimmer was packaged well enough and not in some dinky fashion, Easy assembly, directions are straightforward enough to follow.

Now that the skimmer is assembled I must say it's a very solid piece of equipment, and doesn't feel or seem cheaply made in any way. Another thing I liked was that the skimmer cup was large not overly large but large enough to where you can collect some serious skimmate before emptying. And the thing I enjoyed most, is that the skimmer is dead quiet, I hear no noise from the skimmer! so far I'm quite happy with my choice, it's been running for 15 minutes now and I'll report back once the skimmer had created a foam head and breaks in. But so far nothing but positive things with the skimmer. I wasn't expecting it to be this quiet, I figured there would be some noise of sorts but as advertised the skimmer is dead quiet and doesn't make a peep. Last thing that I really like is that the skimmer can detach from the base plate making it so that you can get inside the skimmer when cleaning and clean the whole skimmer top to bottom unlike most skimmers that make it difficult to clean the body.

Overall fisrt impressions:
dead quiet, sturdy, easy assembly, decent packaging and instructions, and quite sexy to look at, nice sized skimmer cup, easy cleaning for future times.

 

[whippetguy]

Congrats on the new skimmer. Nothing like getting a new toy for your tank.

 

[ksicard]

Congrats on the new skimmer. Nothing like getting a new toy for your tank.

It's like christmas when I get something such as a nice new skimmer. So far the skimmer has produced a half inch of skimmate, when I noticed this I made sure to close the adjuster all the way so I don't wake up to over flowing skimmer. It's already got some foam in the neck, and I'm just going to give it some more time to do it's thing until I tune the skimmer in. Zero microbubbles in the DT, dead quiet, and already forming some nice foam. Looking forward to this guy breaking in.

 

[ksicard]

This guy is skimmimg like a beast coming up on the 48 hour mark, he's collected about an inch of green skimmate. He broke in yesterday it seems, and now I'll be tunning the skimmer for a more wet skim over the cours of the next week and a half or however long it takes to get tuned in. But so far he's already outperformed my last skimmer in skimming ability, absolutely dead quiet, little to no micro bubbles, and is very easy to adjust.

I'll post back one last time on the skimmer's performance once I get it tuned in and skimming correctly after a few weeks to a month. But so far, I'm very happy with my choice in skimmers.

 

[ksicard]

Update on the skimmer:

I've got the skimmer some what tuned and it's producing a foam head no problem, but It's only pushing the foam into my collection cup a little bit after feeding so I'm going to purchase more fish since I only have 3 in my 75g DT so that way I can get the skimmer to be skimming around the clock. I'll probably add 5 or 6 small fish this next week so I can get a decent bioload for the skimmer to work with.

Some more thing's I wanted to add about the skimmer:

It isn't overly sensitive to putting hands in the tank and what not which I like since it never overflows randomly like some skimmers.

Skimmer is too efficent for my tank and it's current bio-load so I'm adding some fish to get the skimmer skimming around the clock, will post back once I get some more bio-load in my tank.

 

[ksicard]

Here's a picture of my collection cup with 5 days worth of skimmate, bare in mind this is on a 75g DT with only 3 fish. I'm picking up 4 new fish tomorrow so I'm expecting this skimmer to really start working once I get them in the tank. Will post update once the new fish have been in the tank for 5 days or so. Skimmer is awesome so far and still haven't run into any problems with it, I was surprised at the amount of skimmate I got with my current bio-load. Will update next week on how it handles the added bio-load.

 

[ksicard]

I added 3 small chromis and 1 baby regal tang on friday and this is what I got for 3 1/2 days of skimming.

I definetly would recommend this skimer to others, very happy with the end result. And this should conclude my review on it.