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

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.

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.

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