Red Sea Prizm Protein Skimmer

Review
The Prizm Protein Skimmer made by Red Sea is a competitively priced skimmer that is designed to hang on the back of the tank. There are a few different models available:

Prizm - for up to 400 liter/100 gal tanks, hang on tank
Prizm Pro Deluxe - for up to 1200 liter/300 gal tanks, hang on tank or in sump use, also includes a surface skimmer and refillable media basket for biological and chemical media

It comes with an external water pump that attaches to the bottom of the unit. The neat part about this skimmer is the two stage reaction compartments where the water is first forced upward through the first compartment and then downward in the second compartment. This cross current allows the tiny air bubbles to have longer contact time and therefore more protein rich foam when it arrives at the top of the skimmer collection basket. Check out the animation on the Red Sea website for more information on how this skimmer operates.

Setting up this skimmer was rather easy and it took about 15 minutes to have it fully operational (it helps to read the directions first). The only thing you need to regulate or adjust with this skimmer is the water flow. This is done by turning a valve located on the top of the skimmer’s water intake pipe. The more you open up this valve the faster the water will flow through the skimmer. With the increased water flow will come an increase in the noise level put out by this unit. The amount of noise produced by this skimmer could be compared to the amount of noise produced by an aquarium air pump. It wasn’t too noisy, but you could definitely hear it running.

After running the skimmer for 10-12 hours we noticed a nice amount of dark brown skimmate in the collection chamber located at the top of the unit. Removing this chamber for cleaning is very easy to do. You simply have to twist it off, rinse out the collection chamber and twist or push it back on.

The Prizm Pro model comes with a surface skimmer which should provide even better skimming results than the regular model.

Positives

• Nice price (regular model is under $100)
• Slim profile and designed to hank on the back of the tank
• You can regulate the amount of water flow
• Easy access to the collection cup for cleaning
• Efficiently removes proteins from the tank water

Negatives

• The first negative that we could think of would be the noise factor. It is not very noisy at all, but it may bother some people.
• They should provide the surface skimmer on all of the models and not make you buy the pro version or upgrade kit.

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