EHEIM skim350 ( duck weed skimmer)

Well I guess I will be the one to start this. New product to me, never seen it on the market before a couple weeks ago. Had a couple extra dollars to spend so I picked one up. And WOW, impressive. I am sure all of us with planted tanks that switch plants, exchange them with others end up with duckweed. You can scoop duckweed out over and over, pick it out one by one but only to miss just one and it'll be back.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This tank, 30 gallon with a 36" plant growing LED, duck weed will blanket the surface within days. I stuck the EHEIM skim350 in the tank and within minutes ALL the duck weed was gone. Had to dump the basket 3 X to get rid of the current population. I left the machine running for a while, came back and tested results. Moving hoses, waving my hand around to wash water around everywhere and nothing, no Duckweed. Not even one little piece.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This skimmer also will suck up small plant debris but anything larger than Duckweed will fill up the basket quick or retard the suction. However, dumping the basket is quick and easy.

Besides the retail price a big thumbs up on design and function!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I made a video on it. I'll add it in so people can see it in action. Love this device.

Yeah, it's awesome Cory. I'll also use it to help skim up small plant debris after bi weekly clippings. There is always a lot of little pieces floating after and this will help elevate picking them all out with my fingers.

It cleaned up the surface of my 25 in 5 minutes... I now run it on my 13 long full time. The first day it managed to catch a bunch of shrimp. That was great cause it made it super easy to transfer them to another tank. No more shrimp have gone in since though... seems the smart ones stayed behind!

Nice!

If it didn't catch shrimp at all I'd be onboard to help solve my watermeal problem, but separating baby shrimp from skimmed watermeal seems like a lot of work.

I just had a shrimp batch born after the skimmer was added, no more catches yet. I think it was more a function of me putting the skimmer where the water lettuce in my tank accumulated. The shrimp spent most of their time on this water lettuce, so they explored into the skimmer. If I was still catching more shrimp, I could easily solve the problem with a piece of coarse foam in the top opening. It wouldn't catch as much duckweed, but the skimming efficiency wouldn't be affected.

I have a ton of floating plants in the tanks where I have watermeal issues; I guess I'll just have to yank those, then let the device do its work - both to avoid catching shrimp and so it actually stucks the stuff in.

I just grabbed one on fleabay; we'll see how it goes. Manual removal of watermeal is a huge pain... way worse than duckweed. I could use platies to do it (no watermeal in my tanks with platies!), but they'd eat way more baby shrimp than the skimmer would.   

Thanks to a slacker seller I didn't receive my skimmer until today.

I set it up, plugged it in, and off it went, sucking watermeal up like a boss and spitting it all right back out into the tank!   

So I cut some filter floss to size and swapped that for the sponge it ships with - tadah! Works like a charm now. My chocolate shrimp tank is nearly watermeal-free! I did have to yank the larger floating plants, but it cleared the tank in short order.

Thanks for the recommendation everyone!   

Wow that was a slow turn around time. Hate slow shippers!

Me too; they gave me no explanation either. The box was crushed as well; thankfully it works and no pieces were broken.

Never heard of water meal. Just read up on it. It's like duck weed on a micro scale. I can see how this maybe even more annoying to get rid of than duck weed.

Indeed - it's tougher to get rid of, but less of a problem since just about any decent-sized non-bottom-feeding fish will eat it. And it's highly nutritious too!

It's a plague in my shrimp-only tanks, my walstad where I have tiny fish, and my cory tanks. It's extinct in any tank where I have platies.

In a couple of my tanks it's like a green snow-globe when I stick my hand in.      

Here are some before and after shots of my poor 20g walstad.  I had to empty the skimmer 4 times...    It took about 30 minutes to accomplish that, maybe a bit less (including trips to the sink).  I'm going to leave it on that tank for a while.  This thing is easily worth the price of purchase!

Yes, I've neglected this tank.

Before:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

After:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Note that there are still a ton of little green dots in the water in the after shot.  Unfortunately there's been so much watermeal in there for so long that some of it doesn't float anymore and has sunk to the bottom.  It got stirred up into the water column when I was cleaning up the plants this morning.  I'll try to stir it up and suck as much as possible out during the next water change.

I've skimmed 4 tanks so far; I have one left with a watermeal problem that I'll probably tackle this afternoon.

Thankfully watermeal grows a lot slower than duckweed, it seems.  I expect it to slowly come back, but at least I have a fairly easy way to get rid of it now.

So I have a question about these protein skimmers now. I have two of them working, and I can tell they are doing a great job of clearing up the water surface of any milky buildup. My question is how do they do this? Is the cleaning just a factor of the surface agitation they produce? i.e. do they take the protein from the surface and re-dissolve it into the water column? Or is the protein actually trapped in the sponge, requiring regular squeezing of the sponge?

As a side note, I think for me the justification of this gadget over just using a HOB filter or spray bar or sponge filter or airstone is that it produces so little surface disturbance. My tanks where I am using it have a water surface that's as clear, if not clearer, than the glass on the sides.

KaraWolf wrote:  think I will trade you guys problems. Seriously thinking about infesting my tank WITH duckweed because both red root floater and salvinia have been decimated. >< lol and then ill hate life and want one of these skimmers

Do you have salvinia cucullata, or natans, or ? I've found salvinia cucullata and red root floater to be the two most difficult floating plants to maintain. So if you're failing with these, I'd try something easier like salvinia natans, water lettuce, or amazon frogbit. Red root floater is quite fragile and loves a LOT of light. I can't speak to what s. cucullata likes; I've never been able to get it to grow well consistently without mold or other issues.

KaraWolf wrote: the red root floater got eaten by surprise bladder snails-they devoured the roots and I don't think they liked my current. Not sure what kind of salvina, Ron gave them to me at the last swap meet. My fish could be taking bites. The leaves have half circles in them before they dissapear. Need something to establish for shade before I get my hands on some hatchetfish.

My 1st guess was the lighting... I say that only because of what you have wrote in the past about not changing bulbs, and hating to replace them even if one bulb still worked,  



But yeah, red root floaters do not like water current at all. Mine only thrive because they get stuck on top of plants that have broken water surface.

 - thanks for sharing the before and after pictures pbmax, that's awesome!

2 months now and no signs of Duck Weed.  

So what does a person do with a skimmer specifically designed to remove duck weed when all the duck weed is gone? One member suggested using it as a protein skimmer for a small tank to remove bio film. That's one use.

How about a CO2 defuser?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This is pretty funny, but potentially useful. Tell us how your CO2 changes!

KaraWolf wrote:Rent it to others with duckweed problems XP

Lol , no kidding. Do you want to rent it? I paid $30 for this thing, used it for like 2 weeks and it made its rounds to all of my tanks. Works awesome as a skimmer. Plus $30 is what I paid for my best CO2 reactor. The  very 1st CO2 defuser I seen in a large tank was something exactly like this. Being very small and compact I think it'll work just fine for this application.

@MRTom, I'll keep y'all updated

KaraWolf wrote:Rent it to others with duckweed problems XP

I would actually love to rent one of these. I can't really justify buying one of these right now, but I would love to use one for a day.

Technically, the skimmer is designed to remove surface film; in fact, the manufacturer's web page for the product has no mention of duckweed at all. Maybe we're using it wrong?   

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

As it's very difficult to eliminate watermeal entirely (without fish to eat it), I'm still using mine a month or two after I received it.

I'll second that, I have two, and they are both working overtime on watermeal (rather than duckweed). If really just in the market for a duckweed skimmer, you could DIY one with an upside down water bottle, some foam, plastic hose and a pump. (heck, route the hose to your filter intake, and you have an interesting solution! )