XenoXon is a new company from Hungary making unique skimmers and LED lights which we first encountered at InterZoo 2012. The protein skimmer landscape in the marine aquarium industry may be dominated by manufacturers from China, Germany and America, but the craftsmen from XenoXon have some interesting novelties included in their Coral Dongo protein skimmer. The overall design of the XenoXon Coral Dongo is a pragmatic construction, somewhat reminiscent of the clean simple lines that H&S introduced but with a much more contemporary needle wheel made from hardened foam.
The Coral Dongo comes in several sizes, two of which were displayed in Germany, both using Sicce water pumps with a modified custom-made mesh-wheel impeller that we are told was made by dipping a certain porosity of foam into a thin resin twice. The mesh wheel is very light helping the impeller to spin at high RPMs and chopping up the incoming air into very tiny bubbles. We regret that XenoXon didn’t have one of their Coral Dongo 200 mini skimmers up and running so we could see the performance for ourselves, but the reliable Sicce pump, mesh-wheel and diffuser plate is a winning design for great skimming performance. With clean lines, black & yellow trim and a suggested retail of 249€ if we lived in Eastern Europe the Hungarian made Xenoxon Coral Dongo would be on our shortlist of protein skimming choices. [XenoXon]