Universal Holder for the Aqua Medic Turboflotor 500

[ToeSloth]

So I posted in my tank thread and in another one about Tunze magnets from a few years ago and said that I noticed that Aqua Medic now makes a Universal holder for the skimmer I use to replace the stock one with. Well it arrived in the mail today and the first thing I noticed what that the mount is off set and too wide for the sump area in the back to mount it on the StevieT media rack. I decided to take my Dremel to it and removed a little less than a quarter of the mount so I can get it back in there.

I have a water change set for tonight now so I add this in and take a few more pictures to see how it works. The one thing I will say I notice is that this should hold much tighter than the tunze clamps and still not to glue then down which would have made it even harder to adjust in the future. The other thing is that it has screw in feet towards the bottom of the holder that will allow me to make adjustments to make sure the skimmer is straight up and down as I have to believe when it's not level it doesn't produce as well as it could.

Here are the pictures I took so far. Let me know if anyone wants to see something from a different angle or if you have questions.

 

[ToeSloth]

OK - So that was an adventure!

First things first - the cutdown mount fits but one of the things I note right off the bat is that the design pushes the skimmer must further into the chamber so much so that if you are using anything like a float switch through the chiller area you will run into problems as the the skimmer down dumps directly into the heater chamber and we all know that can lead to micro bubbles if left without anything else to prevent it.

When you push the clips around the body of the skimmer it is ROCK solid, much more than the tunze magnets and clamps are on mine. So that is good and bad as once you slide the skimmer back down in to the tank it is really hard to adjust the height since it is so tightly held. I was able to push it down some to get it to a good level but if you push it too far I can see a situation where you would have to pull the whole thing out to get it back up as grabbing the body is not a good idea, as I have learned the blue membrane in the body will come loose and then you open up a whole new set of problems with pressure and micro bubbles.

I will continue to adjust this mount after I let it run tonight. Here are some more pictures to keep you entertained!