Ok, my SX 160 arrived and im not sure what to think.. Im kinda regretting my choice to go with the RO. Got everything all setup and first impressions are that its very noisy, major downside. Also, according to the labels on the skimmer the Min water level is at 14" and Max being 19"!!! That cant be right I thought over and over... After much frustration trying to figure out what level to have my water I finally checked their website and here is the answer CoralVue provides: "
What water level should I run my in-sump protein skimmer at?
This is the question we get asked the most about in sump protein
skimmers, there really is no set depth that the skimmer needs to run in. The two things you need to look for is that the pump is covered with at the minimum or 1″ of water about the highest point on the pump and second is that the water level in the sump is below the water outlet pipe on the skimmer."
Thats pretty far from precise if you ask me, I cant help but be left wondering, did they do anything whatsoever to try to dial their skimmers in to the best performance at all?? Keep in mind this is a blanket statement for ALL of their skimmers from the $175-$700 skimmers, and thats the answer they are going with?...Yikes. Not to mention the fact that they "get asked this question "THE MOST" of any other question... heres a thought, than PUT that in the instructions!
Now obviously I cannot rate the performance because it isn't broken in just yet but right off hand I can tell you that its not producing nearly the amount of micro bubbles I was expecting. That may be because the pump only came with 1 impeller installed, what ever happened to the choice of mesh or Needle they were shipping with? I guess Im going to have to just spend more $ on an upgrade impeller.
So far im pretty disappointed and really wish I went with the SWC Cone but will update once its running to see how the performance measures up.
