Protein skimmers are a piece of technology which is unique to saltwater aquariums and they’ve been employed as a tool to clean the water in our hobby for decades. There’s many different ways to combine the mixture of fine air bubbles with seawater in a way that encourages foam fractionation and as an avid ‘scholar’ of the medium we enjoy and appreciate almost every single one of them.
While we can’t use every skimmer ever made all the time, we get pretty close to representing a broad swath of modern examples with ten different protein skimmers currently in operation on different tanks and systems at the Studio. Of the ten models currently skimming two are from Maxspect, two are from Red Sea, four are powered by Sicce pumps, four are Chinese, one each is from Germany, Italy, Australia, and America, and all of them are using some version of needle wheel injection technology.
In our video feature of the skimmers we currently use we tried to distance ourselves from the clichéd ‘top ten’ presentations and instead offer a more nuanced overview of each protein skimmer, discussing their individual strengths and highlights. If you’re currently in the market for a protein skimmer, curious to learn more about what distinguishes different brands and models, or simply want to watch some technical reef aquarium content, this new video should make for a nice snapshot of the current landscape of protein skimmers for use on saltwater and reef aquariums.
