Continuing the previous article, the tubes of aquarium protein skimmers indeed disturbing the aquarium's appearance and they all take-up a lot of space (either inside or outside the aquarium) especially if your aquarium is not quite big. Installing a sump for filtration+aquarium skimmer also needs an additional space, more expensive and some installation & plumbing skills. So, are there any other ways to eliminate the surface problems?

Yes, there are. What you need is devices which can take out the water's surface to be filtered by external pressurized filters (canister filters or wet/dry filters). It's different techniques from the protein skimmer that uses air-bubbles to filter the water. You can consider to use some devices as follows:

Surface Overflow Box

Surface overflow box hangs over the side of the aquarium. It consists of 2 units: in-tank box and outside box. The in-tank box will drain the surface by using the overflow technique that brings the surface waste along with it, then the water will be moved to the outside box via a drain tube. From the outside box, the water will go to the sump for treatment, since this device is usually used along with the sump - in our case, we'll use an external pressurized filter instead of a sump.

The overflow technique is very effective to suck all the surface slicks and waste, just connect the output-nozzle of the outside box with the intake of your external pressurized filter (canister filters or wet/dry filters) by using a flexible hose (with some modifications if needed). The overflow capacity will depend on the filter's pump-capacity which return the clean water back to the system.

Since you use the pressurized filter system, there's no flooding threat that can cause a mess to your floor when there's loss of an electrical power. The only disadvantage is you should buy an extra filter just for the surface cleaner purpose. If you don't have an extra budget to buy a new pressurized filter, you can use the surface extractor device.

Surface Extractor

The surface extractor slurps the surrounding water's surface along with surface debris through a floating surface intake. It can be designed as an addition/attachment to external filters that hooks up to the intake of the filter or as a stand-alone device. You should create a flow towards the surface intake by using a spray bar which located at the opposite side.

This device is efficient, but it has 2 following disadvantages:

Surface extractor performs a slower result than the Overflow system. The limited diameter of the pipe limits the quantity of water to be sucked, besides the sucking-power will be shared with the lower-intake of the filter.
You add an extra burden to your main filter, it means that you should clean your filter more often than regular use. Accumulated waste will slow down the output flow before it clogs.

HOB (Power filter) with built-in surface skimmer

As explained in our previous article, HOB+Skimmer is a breakthrough concept in a power filter (HOB) design, a total system, combining a protein skimmer with chemical, mechanical, and biological filtration techniques. It is basically a protein skimmer and an aerating power filter in one compact, easy-to-use unit:

It is easy to operate. The unit hangs on the back of the aquarium, just like a standard power filter and provides three stages of filtration.
Innovative, built-in skimmer Automatically adjusts to aquarium water level (Patented Floating Surface Skimmer Technology) for effective removal of Surface Film (oily, organic film and scum) & Dust from the surface.
Three-level intake system extracts water from the surface, middle, and bottom for complete aquarium filtration. Includes 2 filter cartridges for efficient, mechanical, chemical, and biological filtration.
Improves Oxygenation & Water Circulation.
They are for freshwater or saltwater aquariums.

Now you know how to clean the water's surface, do not hesitate to try any options (with or without aquarium protein skimmers) to get the best result for your aquatic paradise.

See you in our next articles.