Maintenance costs
The pump PSK1000+ is declared to have a remarkable consumption of 57 watt with normal rotor, but Sicce declares that the configuration with brush rotor and a mono-pump skimmer has a consumption of about 25 watt, that’s 219 kwh a year, and a price of about 59 euro if the cost per kwh would be stable to 0,27 euro.
As usual, we measured the consumption
and also the power factor, or cos(fi)
A great value, while the consumption found it’s a bit higher than the declared one, with almost 31 watt. The difference it’s that we go from 59 euro a year to 73. At the end, the difference it’s unimportant. A very acceptable maintenance cost of, more or less, 6 euro a month.
Conclusions
As you have already understood we really loved this skimmer. The UltraReef Akula uks-180 skimmer, in fact, turned out to be extremely valid, perfectly built, offered at a very competitive price (seen its technical features and performances) of 595 euro, so we can’t do anything besides strongly suggest it!
It showed regularity and efficiency in operation, with the maintenance of the pump to be kept in perfect function. But this obviously doesn’t depend on this UKS, but it’s a common trait of all the skimmers. It’s extremely easy to be opened and cleaned. It shows a real attention to details. And the possibility to slide out the cylinder inside the glass really caught us!
Then we have to say that the performances of air suction are unchanged from the declared ones, and this doesn’t happen very often. Unluckily we can’t say very much about the quantity of filtered water because we couldn’t do our measurements because of the conformation of the skimmer itself.
We consider it pretty adequate for an aquarium with SPS corals and fish of 500 liters, but if we were talking of, for example, less inhabited, I think that you can go over the limit of 1000 liters.
Skimmer UltraReef UKS 180
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