Protein Skimmers

Protein Skimmers are an excellent addition to the marine aquarium. The basic principle of protein skimmers is to foam the water so that the gunk and waste bi-product gets collected and then you can dispose it.

There are many different types of protein skimmers available on the market. The most widely used is the needle wheel or pin wheel protein skimmer. This is a small connector which is placed over the water pump and churns the water to create the necessary foam. This is widely believed as the best form of foam fractionalisation. Other methods available are air stone based or high pressure direction nozzles.

The air stone is a simple method where an airstone with air line are house in a tube and the bubbles then create a meager abount of foam which can be removed. The high pressure direction nozzles work in the same principle as putting your thumb over a hose and pointing it at the inside of a bucket. This method is not widely used yet but seems very promising.

The basic premise of any of these techniques is to produce foam fractionalisation which basically means that on small bubbles the gunk will seprate and that the gunk is actually attracted to the bubles surface. The goal is to create as small bubble as possible as they have more surface area than larger bubbles. The longer the bubbles touch the water the more effiecient they are at trapping the pollutants. Once the bubbles have reached the top they will stay as they prefer to be attached to the air not the water.

So all in all the goals of a good protein skimmer is to produce a large amount of bubbles in contact with the water for as long as possible. We have a large selection available which offer differing degrees of of success but no matter what kind you use they all add to the water quality.