The SWC Xtreme Cone 160 Reviewed
Lots of people are going nutzo about all the new cone skimmers coming out and I got my hands on one (and I wanted to go plus one) to see if all the hype was justified.
To give you some background, I run a 90 gallon mixed reef tank that is medium stocked with:
– 1x 5″ Purple Tang
– 1x 4″ Pink Spot Goby
– 1x 3″ Bicolor Blenny
– 1x 2″ Green Chromis
– 1x 2.5″ Bengai Cardinal fish
– 1x 3″ White Stripe Maroon Clownfish
– 1x 1.5″ 6-line wrasse
I feed one time a day and only enough that the fish can eat in 1 min or less. Previously I was running a Vertex IN-100 skimmer that is rated up to 100 gallon tank.
First Impressions
My first thought on opening the shipping box was that the skimmer is extremely compact. With a 9″x7″ footprint, the skimmer looks like a streamlined machine ready for action. Even better, it comes fully assembled in the box so all you have to do is take it out of the box, check for broken parts and you’re ready to put it in your tank. Protein skimmers aren’t hard to assemble, but there is that instant gratification that comes with “no assembly required”. So far, I’m a happy reef junkie.
Something else that caught my eye was that the skimmer comes with a gate valve that adjusts the flow of water leaving
nothing like a gate valve for fine adjustments
the skimmer. Most skimmers have a wedge pipe that you have to twist to adjust the output flow, which are o.k., but they are hard to make small adjustments with – something that will be needed when you want to fine tune your skimmer. Another bonus point for the gate valve and 5 bonus points for positioning the turn knob of the gate valve ABOVE the water line so that I don’t have to get my hands wet when I want to adjust the skimmer.
The skimmer also has an adjustment (above the water line..woohoo!) for air intake as well. The instructions say that this valve is used to make the small bubbles, which supposively make for a stronger skimmer. Hmm..I’m not sold on that idea. I wouldn’t want to restrict the air going into my skimmer in any way. For now, I’m leaving it open and ignorning it.
Getting the Skimmer Wet
Since the skimmer has a compact footprint (9″x7″), getting it to fit in my sump was a snap. I didn’t have to rearrange my phosphate reactor and I didn’t have to modify my sump to get the skimmer to fit. My grin is getting bigger.
After submerging the skimmer, I found a drawback – the powercord is a bit on the short side. I’d judge it to be about 4 feet long, which isn’t bad, but another foot to two feet of length would be nice. The last thing I want to do is have to extend the powercord myself, or re-arrange my wiring work just to get a power outlet to my skimmer. A minor detail, but one that could be a pain depending on your setup.
I knew SWC used an Atman 2500 pump on this skimmer, which isn’t a bad pump, but it’s no Red Dragon Pump either. Granted the Atman was probably used to keep price down, I was anticipating some level of noise coming from the pump as it wasn’t the top of the line brand. After I plugged in the skimmer, I was happy to say that the pump is very, very quiet and certainly wasn’t any louder than my Vertex’s pump. Once plugged in, I could not pick out the sound of the skimmer from the other noises (return pump, water coming down from my tank) in my sump.
The Atman pump is quiet and gaving rubber feet on the bottom of the skimmer housing also helps insulate any noise that might be caused by the pump. Noisy skimmers are a pet peeve of mine and this skimmer certainly passes the noise test with flying colors. 5 more bonus points.
Ok, but how does it skim?
The SWC is gaining points, but I’m still not sold on the whole “cone is better” idea just yet. I’ll to see how much skimmate it pulls out of my tank to really believe the hype.
After 24 hrs, the skimmer broke in and started skimming. I prefer a wet skim, meaning that I like more liquid in my skimmate vs. a skimmate that pulls out solid pieces of waste from my tank. I had high expectations from this skimmer as my tank is medium stocked and if these cone skimmers were really all they were cracked up to be, then it was going to have to pull out some serious funk to make me a believer.
Within 24 hrs, the skimmer had not only broken in, but had pulled out a serious amount of skimmate, including some solid pieces of who-knows-what that smelled horrible. I emptied out the first collection of skimmate and moved on to give the skimmer the oil test.
The what?
The oil test. Protein skimmers build up a head of foam to skim off the funk from your tank.However, when you feed your fish or corals, or stick your hands in your tank, oils in the food, or on your skin are released, change the surface tension of the water and knock down the foam head in your skimmer. Good skimmers take a short period of time to rebuild their head, cheaper skimmer take longer – sometimes up to 5 hours. Longer foam head build-up = less time the skimmer is pulling nasty things from your tank. Since cone skimmers are supposed to build a denser, stronger foam head due to the decreasing radius of the neck of the skimmer, I expected this skimmer to quickly build back its foam head.
I fed my fish some High Performance Diet (HPD) food that would completely knock down the head of foam on my vertex skimmer to see how the SWC would fare on the oil test.
The result: Like my Vertex skimmer, the foam head was completely knocked down. Not surprising. However, unlike my Vertex, the SWC built back its foam head in about an hour and a half. The vertex would take a good two hours. I expected a faster rebuild of the foam head, and an hour and a half is a respectable time. 2 bonus points for the oil test.
The next 72 hrs, I emptied the collection cup 2 times as the skimmer was busy pulling out skimmate, I even dialed back the skimmer to get a drier skimmate, but the skimmer kept pulling out junk at its same pace. Needless to say, I’m impressed.
The skimmate from my SWC 160
So, should I buy one?
If you are a reef junkie or reef enthuiast, yes. If you are a tank dabbler, stick with the traditional non-cone skimmers, like the Vertex – the performance for the cost won’t be worth it for you.
The SWC 160 impressed me with its small footprint, quiet operation and strong skimming ability. For the price ($290 shipped), I think it is well priced and gives you a lot of bang for your buck.
This skimmer will be my main skimmer so I’ll write more in a couple of months with my long-term impressions.
Browse the Store! Questions?
Great writeup. Looking forward to hearing more later.
Thanks Cecil. The skimmer is still pulling out a lot of nasty skimmate so much so that I dialed it back some to go for a wetter skim. More will be forthcoming.
I recently bought a 160 Cone from http://www.coneskimmers.com after reading your blog. Absolutely love it. So easy to use and dial in. It really pulls out the funk and the nasty junk.
I’m glad to you like it! I just pulled mine out this am and gave it a good scrubbing and its already running like new again.
Nothing like cones to keep your tank running smooth!
we’ll I’ve been running my 160 cone for 3 months now and I’ve tweaked it so my bubbles are in the middle of the collection cup middle cylinder….
I have it submersed in 9 inches deep in my middle baffle…
I’m pulling out black sticky crap and going to be collecting it in a empty pop bottle…
to give to someone I really dislike…
I’m happy I went with this btw I’m running a 83 gallon,I hear from alot of people that the 160 cone can skim extreme bioloads…
the measurments of my tank is 40x20x24 I’m running a 30 gallon sump filled half way so probably give in take 100 gallons all in all…
For my livestock:
pair of false perculas
1 yellow tang
1 clown tang
1 sailfin tang
cleaner wrasse
6line wrasse
2 dragonets
orange spotted goby
Inverts:
2 cleaner skunks
2 emerald crabs
1 anemone crab
2 anemone shrimps
1 magnificent large yellow tip anemone
3 handfuls of blue legged hermits/turbo snails
1 sandshifter starfish
also have 4-5 colones of softies(frogspawn,palys,shrooms,candycanes,orange monticap,and tonz of little zoas frag…
I wanna know is can i still buy or obtain more livestock???
A question first:
#1: How many pounds of live rock do you have in your tank?
And to answer your questions and to make some suggestions:
#1: Sounds like you have your skimmer dialed in perfectly. Good work.
I wouldn’t use the empty pop bottle to collect excess skimmate from you skimmer. The reason is you should be cleaning the collection cup and neck whenever it is full. This will keep your skimmer running efficiently. As the neck/cup gets dirtier, the skimmer loses efficiency. So when the cup gets full, empty it and clean the neck.
#2:. While your tank may be 83 gallons and you have a 30 gallon sump, keep in mind that whatever live rock you have in your tank will displace (move water) to your sump. So if your tank is 83 gallons, then with the rock in there you probably have 70-75 gallons of water in your tank with 10-15 gallons in your sump. Therefore your total system volume will be around 80-85 gallons.
#3: I wouldn’t be concerned with adding livestock at this point. In fact, I’d remove some, namely 2 of your tangs. For a tank that size, I’d recommend 1 tang and 1 tang only. The reason is tangs like a lot of swimming room and putting 3 tangs in a 83 gallon tank is crowding them in there. Even in my 100G tank, I only have 1 purple tang. I have friends who have 180 gallon tanks and only have 2 tangs. I’d suggest picking your favorite tang and making sure the other 2 go to good homes.
#4: By dragonets, do you mean green or target mandarin gobies? If so, are they eating frozen or prepared foods? I.e…do they eat what you put in the tank when you feed the other fish?
Hey Mark,
I own a Red sea max 250 which is 65 gallons and recently upgraded the skimmer to a euroreef nano skimmer which goes in the back sump chamber made specifically for this tank. It does a good job skimming but leaks out microbubbles and I have tried everything to stop it and have finally given up. I have decided to build a custom sump(L16 x D18 x H16) to fit in one section of the cabinet and need a good skimmer with a small footprint due to fact this will be a pretty small sump and I am also trying to fit a fuge in. I am considering doing the SWC xtreme 160 cone or the 180 I just wanted to get your thoughts one which one I should go with. I am putting a lot of fish in the tank for the size and will be doing lps and sps so I want to make sure my skimmer can handle it. So far I have
1 3″ yellow tang
1 2.5″ flame angel
2 1″ true perculas
1 1″ blue chromis
1 1.5″ sunburst anthias
and will be adding a 2″ blue jaw trigger and a mandarin in the future. Do you think this skimmer will be enough to handle all these fish in a 65 gallon w/ a 10 gallon sump or should i spend the extra 100 on the swc xtreme 180? Thanks in advanced for your help
Rj…Get the 160 cone. The 180 would be way over kill for your tank.
Hi Mark, I’m planning on getting this skimmer. Since I’m building my sump, what water height would you recommend for the best performance? Description on the skimmer says 7″ to 10″, but does it perform better with a lower or higher water height? Thanks
Dan-
Mine sits in 8″ of water and it works great. It’s a great choice for a skimmer. I love mine.
Also, I can sell SWC skimmers so send me over your zip and I can get you a quote on this skimmer.
Hi mark,
we’ll I’ve got an update for you on my 160 cone.
I’m loving the quality skimming it is doing for my system,as for my tang situation I’m down to 1 tang…
I lost the clown tang and my sailfin tang…
both died becuase of no explination.
I’ve also stocked up on more livestock although am am facing weird issues on the new stock not making it passed 1-2 months,I guess that’s due to over crowding.
As for my nitrates are at 0
I’m also of thinking of swapping out my swc xtreme pellets for warner marine ecobak…
seems like my swc pellets have been helping keep the build up of my cyano in my DT…
Anyways can you see if you can put a video out on bio pellets or vodka dosing…
whats the largest tank you put the swc 160 cone on? i have a 75 gallon heavily stocked… i would love to get a skimmer that i can upgrade to a 125 gallon with… do you think the 160 cone can handle a 125g?
The 160 can easily handle a 125. I just sold one of those to someone last month and they love it.
Let me know if when you want one, I’m a dealer for SWC now so I can ship one your way.
whats your price? shipped to indianapolis 46254
Hi Mark, great web you have in here, to many things to learn you have explained.
I just saw those ideos about SWC skimmers, i love when people share experiences, i am still looking some info about quality pumps on it. Still working silent, do you have some problems after cleaning (restart pump).
I love that one but i just got a rimless 57 gall, whic one do you recomend for me SWC 120???
Thanks great job, i am an international so mi english may be it is not as good as i wish :).
I mean this issue on the pump.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1901513
Sorry i lost a few letters up on my first post
Percival…I’ve never had a single issue with my SWC skimmer.
For the best phosphate control I use a 4-48in agalcanal flow through aluminated by 2 10K floresent lights. Do you practice this technique? It is a natural way to add oxygen and dioxide in the closed system
Alan…I have no idea what an agalcanal is and I couldn’t find it on google. Do you mean algae canal?
Hey Mate,
I have a 100 gallon tank with a Red Sea Berlin x2 turbo hung on the sump. It is a good skimmer but I do not think it is doing the job.
Yellow Tang
Regal Tang
3x Pj Cardinals
Wrasse
2x Clown
Flame angel
Mandarin
Plus a few corals
My Persanality is ENTHUSIEST tests well but Nitrate is a consistant 20
Tank is running and looking awesome and fish and coral are healthy…A little algae starting to show.
Would you recommend to SWC160 or 180 skimmer for me
And do you know if they are available in Australia or someone who will shup one to Australia for me.
YOur site has been a massive help
Thanx Clay
Mark, I noticed in one of your episodes that you have a wave box in your reef. I have one too which leads me to my question, When your wavebox shuts off for the night through photocell does your tank fluctuate in water level? Reason I ask is im trying to tune my ASM 180 that sits in 8″ of water, when my box turns off, my water level drops about 1/2″-3/4″ below my 8″ mark. now my skimmer is not set to where i want it and prevents me from fine tunning it. I really wanted it to sit in 8″ of water any ideas would be helpful.
Regards,
Rob
Rob…the water level does fluctuate as when the wavebox is running, it is moving a lot of water around your system. I’d get rid of the photocell and let the wavebox run 24/7.
Hi Mark. First I wanna say I love the site and your videos. I have a question if this is the right place. I have a 125g with two 20g long tanks as sumps for total of about 155 gallons running, not counting sand and rock. Tank will be mostly softie dominated with a few LPS and SPS. Fish stocking will be about 10 3-4 inch fish and a blue tang. Would this be considered heavily stocked? Im looking for a skimmer and you have turned me onto the SWC. At first I wanted the 160, but I think I can sqeeze out another Benny to go for the 180. Do you think the 160 will be enough for my tank or should I do the 180?
Hi.. I got a question. Talking about performance. What skimmer would u recommend for a 90 g tank? The SWC 160 or a Vertex in 180. Thanks
I don’t know if the design changed, but even though there’s a gate valve KNOB on this skimmer it’s simply a gate valve knob on a wedge pipe. If one were to buy this thinking it had a true gatevalve on it they might be disappointed:
http://reefbuilders.com/2010/02/24/swc-120-160-cone-protein-skimmers-unboxed-impressions/
There is a thread on Reef Central about this skimmer not powering back on after it is turned off for any reason. This could be very painfull when the momentary power outage happens when we are not home – skimmer will stay not working. Users attribute this to the faulty SWC mesh wheel and recomend replacing it with needle-wheel.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2057832
I wonder if you have experienced this with your skimmer?
Also, dimension question: the 9″x7″ footprint you listed in your “first impressions” – does it include the vertical pipe sticking outside of the white base outline? Or 9×7 is the size of the rectangular base only?
Hi Mark – I’ve had the SWC 150 cone skimmer for about 6 months now, but can never seem to get consistant skimming…. I have a 90 gallon display stocked as follows:
160 lbs live rock
10 lbs live sand
5 blue green chromis
1 yellow tang
2 oscillaris clowns
2 banggai cardinals
2 small inidentified crabs
4 zebra hermits
assorted snails
Several different mushrooms
a colony of green star polyps
1 per bubble coral
and 1 unidentified anemone.
And a 75 gallon refugium with some live rock rubble, cheato and live sand. The skimmer sits in the fuge by the pipe that is overflowing from the display.
Everybody keeps saying that they’re getting about an inch or so of skimmate a day, I might be getting half of that and its not very dark at that. I’ve tried tinkering with the ammount of air and water level with no luck.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Terry…you don’t have a lot of bioload in that tank so I’m not surprised you aren’t getting a lot of skimmate. If your tank looks fine, but your skimmate isn’t the same as everyone else’s, I wouldn’t worry about it
Mark, please note my question sent September 11 – I am interested if you observe any problems with your skimmer not powering up after turning it off or power outage?
Thanks!
Pszemol…every once in a while it will not suck air once it is turned back on. I would say it happens to me about once every 2 months
Mark, I watched your video on this skimmer over a year ago when I first bought an AquaC 120. I have nothing against these machines but theyre so pesky to fine tune. That wasnt for me (Keep it simple stupid lol). I never got the skim that i wanted and always had the “popping” type of foam if you know what I mean. I got rid of it a couple of months ago and decided to go with an SWC. Let me tell you, this skimmer pulls out a half cup of solid clay material with black fluid almost every 2 days. when i pull the plug from the bottom of the cup, it literally looks like im doing an oil change on my skimmer =D. Thanks for helping me fine tune this bad boy with your videos!!
Mark, I have a 75gl. hobbiest reef tank that badly needs a skimmer! What would you suggest for a hang on skimmer as it is not set up with a sump!!
Thanks,
Tim
I am looking to upgrade my skimmer on my 55g. I have a junk TurboFlotor T1000 and I am seriously looking at the SWC Cone 160 and the 180. I have a softie tank with a few lps but I want to go SPS eventually. Both would be a perfect fit in my 20g long sump
Mark, always enjoy your videos. I purchased this skimmer about two weeks ago and it was working great right out of the box, literally. The other day (2-days ago) I did a five gallon water change on my 60-gallon DT (20-gallon sump) and did some cleaning/maintenance in the DT and sump; my hands were in the tank a great deal. Since then, the skimmer isn’t passing the “oil test” as you describe in your review. Two days later and there’s still no foam head, even though it appears to be making the same amount of bubbles as before. I have enough bioload that there should be plenty to skim. I have a thread on it too, if you could let me know what you think, either here or there, I would greatly appreciate it.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2203941
Hi, i am interested in a SWC Cone 160
How much will it be? I live in houston tx 77083
Thank you
Fernando..I sent you an email with pricing information.
Picked up a used (2 months old) SWC 160 for my tank, my question is, is it possible to “overskim” a tank? I have a 65g DT and a 15g sump, will be tying a 20g frag tank into the system in a month or two, just wanting to know if there will be any negative effects on my tank? Thanks!
Eli…Skimmers are only about 30% efficient so I wouldn’t worry about overskimming.
I am looking for a quote on an SWC Extreme 160 cone skimmer. My zip code is 28732.
Thanks
I’m about to buy one of these but is there any way u can modify it so the the water coming out can go over a 14″ piece of glass
Cayden…the skimmer cannot have any back pressure on it so making the water come out of a skimmer, then rise to go over a piece of glass won’t work
Ok Ty it looks like I have to take that glass out cut it down and glue it back in
Mark,
You still selling the SWC 160? If so, please email me $$ and how to order from you. Thanks again for the reference and advise.
Henry
Henry…I still sell the SEC 160. I just sent you an email.
Mark,
I’m interested in picking up a SWC 160, if you could email me details I’d appreciate it. Thanks for all the info.
Rick
Hi. I’ve setting up an Illuminata 57gallon tank and want to know if the SWC Extreme 160 will work with an Eheim 1260 pump in my return section. The overflow on the rank is rated for 600gph and so is the Eheim pump. Do I need to worry about the flow rate through the skimmer? Thanks in advance for your reply.
Hi Mark I am setting up a 125 gallon tank which will have a 35 gallon refugium and a 20 gallon sump. I plan to have a mixed reef with 120lbs of live rock and well stocked with my limit of fish. Will the SWC 160 Cone Skimmer be enough for this setup?
PEter…given your water volume and desire to heavily stock the tank I’d get something bigger than the SWC 160. SWC doesn’t make a skimmer that I like above the 160 so I’d look at a Reef Octopus or Hydor recirculating skimmer
Hey thanks Mark I’ll check them out. What’s your preference cone or cylinder?