If you're thinking of DIY, think about it and remember I've even bought used and never used skimmers before have . Before the change I had very low performance. Although I would say it worked enough to be my money's worth because if I didn't buy it I probably couldn't afford a 'good' skimmer for 6 months or more and even the first couple he pulled down months. a lot of non-zero skimmates from my tank. Also, I have kept corals in a 55 gallon aquarium without a protein skimmer for 8 months with exceptionally low nitrates, phosphates etc. levels. Of course, who wouldn't want to work less in this hobby? I've heard too many different people swear by how effective protein skimmers are. So I bought it mainly out of curiosity. I was in the DIY crowd before buying this so the modification was something I've always thought about. I am currently using this skimmer with an air pump driving two air stones suspended in the first chamber where the bubbles are 'produced'. This configuration resulted in so many well sized bubbles that I couldn't see through the entire "reaction chamber". Before the mod I could practically see through the thickest part of the bubble cloud and see the chamber at the very bottom where the bubbles enter the reaction chamber. Skimming depends on several factors, two of which are the number of bubbles and the size of those bubbles. I think there are probably endless ways to modify this into a more powerful skimmer IF your out of the box experience is less than expected and you're willing to make changes. I pulled an amazing amount of literally "black stuff" out of my seemingly clean tank with this budget skimmer before I modified it. I'm very curious what a "good" skimmer is capable of. The Magermatt it produces isn't perfect at all, but some are better than none. Overall for the money I would choose this skimmer over a skimmer.
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