Functioning
The Vertex Omega 180i is ready to skim right after being inserted in the sump. Foam fills the main body starting from the diffusing plate to the cup base. The foaming is remarkable, soft and soapy, made up of tiny bubbles. Normally, when the cup is placed upon the skimmer’s main body, the bubbles get into its neck and tend to get bigger inside it. Visually, the skimming seems to be optimal.
The sump water level is best kept around 20 cm, in which case the water pressure and air inflow are perfectly balanced, that happens because the skimmer is built to do so, not for any other reason. That’s why I suggest you keep your sump water level at 20 cm, I actually keep it at 21-22 cm and I don’t have any issues.
The skimmer was tested in an extremely loaded tank, with values very close to zero. The aquarium is an Elos 130 custom 130x60x50h lighted by 3 Ecotech Marine Radion, two G2 (review) and 1 G2 Pro (review). Water movement is assigned to a VorTech MP40w (review) and a pair of Tunze Turbelle NanoStream 6095 (review).
For giving you an idea of the Vertex Omega 180i skimming we’ll show you the following pictures of the foam. The first illustrates the foam right after cleaning the skimmer, the second after 3 days of skimming.
We’ve also got one picture of the skimmer without cup.
As you can see the foam is beautiful, with plenty of extremely tiny bubbles.
Here we can see the foam in the cup, and its texture after passing through the really dirty neck of the skimmer. We can see this more closely in the following picture.
To end up this array of skimmer foam pictures, I will show you one of the cup lid covered in dirt.
As we have seen and discussed so far, the foam in soft and soapy, skimming colour and texture are optimal, rather wet, and it deposited a considerable layer of dirt onto the neck and cup lid. Shortly after cleaning the foam doesn’t have any issues climbing into the cup, the bubbles being very small because of the amount of air drawn into the system.
After five months using this skimmer, we can tell you that the Vertex Omega 180i has been perfect, it didn’t show any leakage, and the pollutant values of the tank improved. The water became clearer, probably because of the skimmer ability to remove anything from it. A truly remarkable result.
Our impression is that this skimmer is amazing. The air drawned, as we are about to see, reaches incredibly high values, unlike anything I have seen before. It’s exquisitely built and its functioning reflects it.
