Like many of you, when I first laid eyes on the Mame Nano Skimmer my thought was that it was a beautiful piece of kit, but hardly worth the cost relative to it’s performance. nevertheless, I went ahead and gave the Mame Skimmer a try on a 28 gallon EcoMini for which it is woefully underpowered, and ran the reef as I normally would. In the past two months since the Mame Nano Skimmer was first unboxed, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how clean this particular reef has remained.
I am no way implying that somehow this little air driven glass tube has pulled anywhere near the amount of skimmate that a conventional small needle wheel skimmer would have produced. However, the combination of the Mame Skimmer being placed in the first surface-skimming compartment, light feedings, having a bare bottom and occasional use of activated carbon means that the little t00b from Japan has been one of many techniques I use to keep the nutrients at a reduced level.
The Mame Nano Skimmer may not perform at the same level as $200 of plastic skimmer would, but it does the job of pulling some of the “low hanging” proteins and it is plenty of air water mixing to keep the water degassed and well aerated. Furthermore, the air driven design of the Mame Nano Skimmer adds minimal heat to the tank, it is very low maintenance and it’s actually kind of neat to see protruding elegantly from the corner of the filter compartment. In the future I am pretty sure I will aim smaller when sizing protein skimmers to help run my lightly stocked reefs, and air driven models will definitely be back on the radar for even some larger applications.
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