ASM protein skimmers, any complaints?

[Fishingpcola]

Is this a good skimmer?

[scrmbld33]

i have a g3 and love it, its alot better modded, like the gate valve is almost a must, directions for the mod are at www.asmskimmer.com

[mr pink floyd]

had the mini on my tank 2 weeks

no foam head, tons of microbubbles.


might because its only 1 fish in 20g, but i feed LOTS. pretty dissapointed actually. to get 3/4" of foam i needed to bore out the venturi as much as possible, and put an air pump to pump air into the venturi hose. otherwise the skimmer would stop pulling air after 24 hours or so.

[vanmo92]

no complaints from me.

[poppin_fresh]

They are decent skimmers for the money if you take the time to recirculate mod them. I think my H & S is better than my ASM, but it was also several hundred more $$.

If the ASM is the most you can afford, it is still a better value than a lot of other skimmers out there, especially if you are willing to do a little work to it.

[pondy]

no complaints from me

[turtleman9100]

I have the mini on one tank and the G1 on my other. I love them both.

[useskaforevil]

i hated my asmg2 until i did a mesh mod and a gate valve mod (ball valve) but now i take back everything i said. also the mods were very easy to do and really only took about 30 minutes for both of them.

[TKByrnes]

I have a mesh modded G-2 and love it. You need to do the mesh mod or you wont be happy with it.

[soahnk]

I've got the G3 and even mesh moded it doesn't pull much skimmate. But then neither did our last skimmer. I suspect that it is just something about our tank. We have the G3 on a 44 gal with only 5 small/med fish so it doesn't have much work to do.

I have not done the gate valve mod yet. It is a bit of a pain to adjust without it but once adjusted it should be more stable than with the gate valve mod. With the gate valve mod you are adjusting a flow resistance. With the as supplied standpipe you are adjusting the level more directly (IMHO). I could be wrong but it is a useful justification to put up with the hassle of adjusting the standpipe.

That said, I will probably do the gate valve mod next time I am ordering from someplace that sells the valves. So much for logic.

I plan to do the recirc mod soon too.

The mesh mod is REALLY EASY and cheap. I will probably take almost as much time to get you skimmer out of your sump taken apart and put back in again as it will to do the mod. $7 for Enkamat from EBAY is the only expense (+ a couple of cable ties)

[soahnk]

A few pics of my mesh wheel mod. I was too chicken to cut up my pin-wheel so I fabricated a new base (white in the pics). After seeing it in action though, I would not hesitate (well I might wince a little:D) to snip the pins off of my pin wheel.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0089.jpg

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0092.jpg

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0093.jpg

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0094.jpg

[soahnk]

A few pics of my mesh wheel mod. I was too chicken to cut up my pin-wheel so I fabricated a new base (white in the pics). After seeing it in action though, I would not hesitate (well I might wince a little:D) to snip the pins off of my pin wheel.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0089.jpg

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0092.jpg

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0093.jpg

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/soahnk/IMG_0094.jpg

[mofrags]

I have a asm2 in my tried but don't use pile

[useskaforevil]

the gate valve mod is better in my opinion than just using the stand pipe because its very easy to just bump the standpipe to accidently change the level, plus if you run the foam over it the foam clogs over time and forces the skimmer to overflow. that was half the reason i hated the thing.

[aquaman67]

Here's 1000 replies over the last 4 years about the ASMs. I have a G-2 and like it.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=426125&perpage=25&pagenumber=1