The new Avast Marine CS3 Cone Skimmer Kit is an ideal way to get a stellar protein skimmer at a great price while satisfying your appetite for DIY. The CS3 cone skimmer is probably one of Avast Marine’s best ‘YouBuilt’ line of assembly-required aquarium products offering an incredible value for the mechanically inclined.
Coming in either a clear or smoked acrylic cone, the CS3 has a cone with a 10 inch (25cm) diameter at the base which transitions to 5 inches (13cm) at the neck. The 25 inch height of the Avast CS3 cone is supported by a footprint of 16 x 16 inch (46 x 46cm) which also neatly contains not one but two Sicce PSK1000 needle wheel pumps. Both PSK1000 are installed in recirculating mode making the Avast CS3 cone one of the cheapest and smallest footprint dual recirculating cone skimmers around.
The $375 price for the Avast Marine YouBuilt CS3 skimmer does not include the Sicce PSK1000 pumps. However when you buy the CS3 kit Avast Marine will sell you the PSK1000s for $85 (normally $119) bringing the total price to just north of $550 for everything you need to fractionate the heck out of 500 gallons of water.
This cone skimmer kit allows you to save money by doing the final assembly on your own to give you a high-quality cone skimmer with all the bells and whistles of skimmers that cost over three times as much. The CS3 protein skimmer has been in operation for a year and half on a variety of tanks in the Washington DC area and the design has proved to be an effective one.
Avast Marine is evaluating the use of controllable DC water pumps with this particular skimmer, as many other manufacturers have done. Future versions of the Avast CS3 cone skimmer could see the incorporation of the Waveline 5000 DC pump, one of our favorite products of 2012, or better yet the forthcoming controller-ready Waveline 6000. [Avast Marine]
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