OASE Indoor Aquatics CrystalSkim 600 Skimmer

Best skimmer ever. Very little noise to none. Durability you can count on. same but powerful. My fish love it and cleans my surface tank well. Great fit for my tank, and great budget cost.

This surface skimmer works awesome on my 40 gallon saltwater tank. It’s quiet, doesn’t leak and fits perfectly on the tank. It’s very durable and easy to clean. Gets the job done and keeps my tank looking great! Also a great price

I bought this one due to low price and that it had a long cord. (First brand i bought, I found the cord was way too short to even plug in while inside the tank). Was very noisy at first and blowing air bubbles until I figured out how to get it at the right level so the skimmer intake floats on the surface and can go down as the water evaporates. Very quiet after that and no bubbles. Works well and cleared all the surface scum off in about 20 minutes from our 65 gal turtle tank. I set it on the light timer switch so it only runs about 10 hours a day. I will buy a second for our other tank since it works so well.

I used an Eheim small skimmer for many years. But I was tired of having shrimp and small fish get trapped in it. Most recently, a Kuhli loach got in somehow, even thought they normally stay at the bottom of the tank. The Oase has two levels of protection to avoid large things from getting into the skimmer. The first level is a turret type clear plastic guard, with 4 slots in it. This is similar to the Eheim. The second level is an intake screen that is similar to a filter inlet strainer. Both will prevent fish and large shrimp from getting sucked in. Instead of using the foam filter, I use a small piece of filter pad instead. The Oase also looks more streamlined than the Eheim. Depending on your tank, you might not like that the output of the skimmer points straight down instead of going to the side, but the output power is adjustable. The skimmer is detachable from the suction cup plate, which makes cleaning easier. The Oase has a better build quality than the Eheim. Sometimes it takes fiddling with the filter to make it not eject a ton of bubbles. Adjusting the flow rate and the height fixes it.This is a follow-up. I added a smart plug to my plug strip (Home Depot defiant brand for around $10), so I can easily turn the skimmer on and off. The smart switch has a manual on off switch and is programmable with a schedule via the app. The WiFi works well. I turn it off when the lights go off, I don’t want plants or dead fish to clog it at night. Small dead fish can make it past the clear outer guard, but won’t make it past the inner grill. No live fish or shrimp have been sucked in. So far I am not bothered by the output going straight down.

I’m super upset, the product pretty much Killed my betta fish.Worked fine, it did what it’s supposed to do, I only plug it when it needed.However my fish got stuck between the product and the glass of the tank, idk for how long he was there because it was a super early work day and lights weren’t on when I left.Came back to him stuck, I panicked and as soon I took the suction cups he float lifeless.If you guys care for any feedback I would suggest maybe a different cups, ones that won’t get too close to the glass for little fishes like bettas.I loved this fish like all my others but the fact of knowing he most likely were suffering makes me extra upset

The media could not be loaded. Edit- it can suck up the tiniest of shrimplets but have only found one dead one when I opened it to clean out the plant specks. There’s usually a few grazing on the sponge but they are easy to see and I use those handy tweezers that come with it to scoot em off back into the water. Happy with the purchase! (End edit)Built solid, easy to operate and setup. Good quality suction cups and bracket.Very small and compact.Using in a 10gal plantscaped shrimp tank with gravel substrate. Not recommended if you have sand substrates. Excellent with gravels. This is due to the downward water blasting straight down. The intensity of this downwash is based on how + or - you have it set to. My shrimps don’t mind hanging out under it for what it’s worth. I keep it set pretty close to minimum.Silent operation and versatile setup options to best suit your needs. The fine grills seem to be doing a good job keeping my shrimps out but letting the plant specks in (granted it has only been in a day so far but even if they do I’m not worried about em. They’ll be fine till I get to em. Maybe even happy!)I’ll update if anything changes.Note: I did replace the coarse blue sponge it came with for a much finer/denser sponge I cut from an extra foam piece I had from an old filter replacement. I was worried that the insanely difficult to deal with water-meal would be able to go through the sponge holes and go back into the tank. That’s the only mod I did and it’s because I’m using this to fix a problem of water-meal aka pond meal and it’s so much worse than duckweed. Smaller and *far* more prolific. This is making short work of it and for the first time in weeks, I have hope that I can actually beat this “plant” and successfully remove it for good. It’s proven to me to be pretty much the worst. With it taking over a fully stocked, heavily planted shrimp tank, a full breakdown and sterilize was not an option. Manual removal was an proving to be a mammoth exercise in futility.Now that it’s installed, I can’t help but giggle to see the green micro balls of doom get sucked up automatically. I was worried that they would float back up and out and back into the tank when it turns off due to the timer, but it seems the sponge I used traps and hold them perfectly. Rinses off in seconds.I have no qualms with this piece and overall I am super duper happy with this skimmer. It feels quality built and seems like the cost is appropriate.Long story short, This was the answer to a difficult question. “How to remove water-meal in a planted shrimp tank” And boy am I happy I chose this one! I have it on a timer to run for 30 mins every 4 hours. It’s super easy to clean. Just take the top off, use the included tweezers to pull the sponge up and out and rinse off. Easy as pie. No need to turn off, or even remove the unit for this. Great design. It seems like the designer actually knew what they were doing!!! Very rare to see these days. Very refreshing and hope it holdsup over time.Super happy to see those micro plants get sucked up. I don’t want to tell you how many hours of my life I wasted with a cup trying to skim these out day after day, clear the surface and the only to find hundreds more the next morning. Literally.This is the way.

This is for no flow freshwater tanks. If you have output flow and wave pump this thing is just garbage. It has to have a level surface to work. It will lots of blow micro bubbles until you find the sweet spot which you have a millimeter to play with . As soon as your water level changes or evaporates later on that day, back to purging and bubbling out the aquarium. The floating top won’t rotate without the flow cut off. You need a hang on back filter with no flow pumps for this to work. Reefers, spend your money elsewhere.