SWC 160 cone skimmer

SWC is a company thats good at pushing out quality skimmers with a reasonable cost. The SWC 160 cone which has been reviewed quite a bit is no exception. The skimmeris a nice piece of hardware thats easy to install for the everyday reefer. The best part about this skimmer for me is the aesthetics, the white acrylic it uses makes this skimmer look to be a high end skimmer. Now im not saying this skimmer is bad, its far from it but like everything we buy, the looks matter quite a bit as the aquarium industry/hobby is based quite heavily on visual representations.

The packaging on the skimmer is in my opinion as good as it gets for a pre-fabricated unit, the foam used in the packing is 1"thick on all sides and when I got the box it felt rigid. The skimmer came with everything, and a piece of paper for the manual which i find to be quite useless since the skimmer was so easy to use.

Features:

-Cone Body

-Large Collection Cup

-Gate Valve Wedge Pipe for ease of tunning

-Silencer

-650 litres/hour air draw

-Small Footprint of 9" x 7" x 20.58"

-Fully dis-assemble for cleaning

The skimmer itself has pretty good craftsmanship, a decent thickness on the acrylic was used and the seams seem well put together. The collection cup snaps in via a compression of o-ring like you would see on a BK or vertex cone skimmer and requires only 1/2" clearance to get the cup out. The venturi is pretty nice as well , it snaps in just like the collection cup so cleaning should be pretty easy. There you have it a skimmer thats built with the reef keepers in mind one that will work efficiently without breaking the banks.

Final: Mame update

having tested the overflow in a spare tank with freshwater i found the venturi tubes inner diameter to be too small. Though the system did work during the priming stages the water in the tank would get close to the rim and i didnt want to take the chance of it flooding. So in an attempt to bore out the venturi the bit caught the acrylic and cracked both venturis down the middle of the pipe. For those that are planning on building a replica down the line i would recommend buying 1/4" thin walled tubing for the venturi. Overall though the project has been fairly easy to do and the cost was only $25 for all the material cost that is buying the tubing at full length as well (6ft). For the time being I'll be going a different route with my personal reef tank and hope you guys enjoyed the build.