Turboflotor Blue 500 hands on and first impression

The Turboflotor Blue 500 from AquaMedic is a smaller internal protein skimmer that has a few things going for it: it’s small with a small footprint, it’s easy on the eyes and affordable but most important of all, it makes a ton of very fine bubbles. Thankfully, those fine bubbles are injected into the body in such a way that very few of them made it out of the skimmer, which is even more important when we’re talking about an internal protein skimmer like the Blue 500.

We first spotted the petite Turboflotor Blue 500 in the AquaMedic booth at InterZoo 2010 and our impression then was that AquaMedic had well designed and delivered a modern nano skimmer for which there is a greater demand than ever before. Now that U.S. availability and pricing is hammered down and we’ve gotten our tentacles on a review unit, we can tell you that the Turboflotor Blue 500 is going to be very serious competition for the Slim Skim Nano from Hydor, also first spotted at InterZoo.

AquaMedic’s new internal skimmer has a suggested retail price of $129 and a maximum rating for skimming the protein out of 250 liters of water, or up to a 50 gallon tank. Depending on the stocking we’d say you could get away with using the Blue 500 but for an average fish load or a lower nutrient reef tank you’ll probably want something beefier, or two of them.

What makes the Turboflotor worth it’s wight as a fractionator is not the modern skimmer bubble baffle system but the needlewheel/meshwheel hybrid. This impeller design has been around long enough to show it’s capacity to produce uber fine bubbles but we still have our reservations about this design becoming clogged with debris, especially when used internally without any prior filtration. Continue reading for a thorough look at the new Turboflotor Blue 500 skimmer from AquaMedic, and we’ll keep putting it to the test until that Slim Skim Nano comes knocking on the fishroom door.

FTC regulations require that we inform you that we were given this product for review, but our opinion of a product is never affected by how we acquire them.

Jake Adams

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.