Functioning
The skimmer needed some days of break-in, as always. The foam fills completely the body, starting from some inches from the bottom. The foam is thick and the bubbles are thin. Visually both the foaming and the color seem great.
The suggested level in sump is 21 cm, slightly above the 20 cm that we suggest. All our tests had the baffle at 20 cm, so the skimmer works with a hydraulic head of 20,4 cm. According to Rossmont this height is the one that guarantees the perfect equilibrium between the pressure of the water and the sucking of the air. Obviously this happens because the skimmer has been built in this way, not for other reasons. Remember also that the foaming also strongly depends on the salinity: the more salinity we have, the better the skimmer will work. We have always kept salinity at 35 per thousand.
After three months of use we can say that we’re really satisfied with this Rossmont Skimer SX 1000. It worked perfectly in our system. The values of the aquarium were perfect and it has always been very efficient. Plus, the Waver has guaranteed us some less cleaning.
Performances and Measurement
The builder doesn’t declare water and air rate. These numbers are influenced by a lot of different variables, for example the height of water in sump, the height of the water column inside the cylinder and most of all the salinity, that we kept 35 per thousand.
Water rate
The Rossmont Skimer SX 1000 has the drain at the bottom too so the treated water can’t be directly measured. But this time we got around the problem and manage to do it. We filled our container with 21 cm of water, as the producer said, and we used fresh water. Then we set the pump on the bottom, connected the air intake as we were in action. We know that the performances are different with fresh water, but we needed a number as a comparison. Then we measured:
12,6 liters at its minimum, that are 756 liters per hour of water rate. Consider that in marine water this value can be higher, but once placed the pump in the skimmer can also be lacks of load. So we’re going to keep this value for good.
Air rate
For the treated air we used our classic flowmeter Sander that measures the air from a minimum of 100 l/h to a maximum of 1200 l/h. These values then have to be increased by 10% in order to consider the lacks of the device.
So, we obtained an amount of treated air about: 1320 l/h (1200 collected+ 10%), with air totally open. The value wasn’t very stable, but despite this it’s one of the highest. We found a similar value only with the skimmer ATB Medium Size. So even for Rossmont we obtained a great result, our record value here on DaniReef.
The relationship air/water is 1320/756=~1,7
Noise
The skimmer is very quiet. We did our three usual measurements, all at one meter of distance from the aquarium and the sump and this is what we obtained:
Sound pressure at 1 meters with all the utilities on and closed doors: 41,7 dB
Sound pressure at 1 meter with the skimmer switched off and open doors: 45,0 dB
Sound pressure at 1 meters after switching on the skimmer: 45,7 dB
The difference in the sound pressure measured with the skimmer on and off is 0,7 dB, almost 0, so the skimmer should have a noise about 45 dB. Practically silent.
The sound level meter is the usual VOLTCRAFT 320, digital meter IEC 651 Type II that is enough reliable. Given the nature of the noise all the measurements have been done with the attenuation curve dBA.
The article continues on page three with the costs and our conclusions.
