OASE CrystalSkim 350 Surface Skimmer for Freshwater and Marine Aquariums – Compact Internal Filter for Film Oil and Debris Removal, Quiet, Adjustable Flow, Shrimp-Safe, for Tanks up to 92 Gal / 350 L

The media could not be loaded. Edit- it can suck up the tiniest of shrimplets but have only found one dead one when I opened it to clean out the plant specks. There’s usually a few grazing on the sponge but they are easy to see and I use those handy tweezers that come with it to scoot em off back into the water. Happy with the purchase! (End edit)Built solid, easy to operate and setup. Good quality suction cups and bracket.Very small and compact.Using in a 10gal plantscaped shrimp tank with gravel substrate. Not recommended if you have sand substrates. Excellent with gravels. This is due to the downward water blasting straight down. The intensity of this downwash is based on how + or - you have it set to. My shrimps don’t mind hanging out under it for what it’s worth. I keep it set pretty close to minimum.Silent operation and versatile setup options to best suit your needs. The fine grills seem to be doing a good job keeping my shrimps out but letting the plant specks in (granted it has only been in a day so far but even if they do I’m not worried about em. They’ll be fine till I get to em. Maybe even happy!)I’ll update if anything changes.Note: I did replace the coarse blue sponge it came with for a much finer/denser sponge I cut from an extra foam piece I had from an old filter replacement. I was worried that the insanely difficult to deal with water-meal would be able to go through the sponge holes and go back into the tank. That’s the only mod I did and it’s because I’m using this to fix a problem of water-meal aka pond meal and it’s so much worse than duckweed. Smaller and *far* more prolific. This is making short work of it and for the first time in weeks, I have hope that I can actually beat this “plant” and successfully remove it for good. It’s proven to me to be pretty much the worst. With it taking over a fully stocked, heavily planted shrimp tank, a full breakdown and sterilize was not an option. Manual removal was an proving to be a mammoth exercise in futility.Now that it’s installed, I can’t help but giggle to see the green micro balls of doom get sucked up automatically. I was worried that they would float back up and out and back into the tank when it turns off due to the timer, but it seems the sponge I used traps and hold them perfectly. Rinses off in seconds.I have no qualms with this piece and overall I am super duper happy with this skimmer. It feels quality built and seems like the cost is appropriate.Long story short, This was the answer to a difficult question. “How to remove water-meal in a planted shrimp tank” And boy am I happy I chose this one! I have it on a timer to run for 30 mins every 4 hours. It’s super easy to clean. Just take the top off, use the included tweezers to pull the sponge up and out and rinse off. Easy as pie. No need to turn off, or even remove the unit for this. Great design. It seems like the designer actually knew what they were doing!!! Very rare to see these days. Very refreshing and hope it holdsup over time.Super happy to see those micro plants get sucked up. I don’t want to tell you how many hours of my life I wasted with a cup trying to skim these out day after day, clear the surface and the only to find hundreds more the next morning. Literally.This is the way.

I have tried every skimmer on Amazon and some were good, most were bad. This one is hands down leaps and bounds the best one. From the tweezers they provide to get the sponge filter out to clean to the cleaning ability and stability of the skimmer the best. My water surface is like glass. And the motor is a whisper. Best on the market at this price point.

it’s a very good skimmer and does have a light *suction* intake, but the outflow is kinda powerful. i have a 10 gallon (either 10 or 12 inches high, i can’t remember) with Fluval Stratum substrate. this filter kicks the substrate constantly right under it because of the outflow, and i can’t soften the flow further. i tried finding a sweet spot to where it doesn’t do that… but then it produces microbubbles like CRAZY. i also tried adding additional sponge or something to see if that would soften it but it didn’t 😞 i’d make sure your tank is tall enough or you find something around this. otherwise it does an amazing job protecting my shrimp from being sucked up into it :)

Wow—what an incredible little powerhouse! This surface skimmer has completely blown me away. I installed it today on my brand-new 75-gallon freshwater planted aquarium, and within minutes, the difference was astonishing. The biofilm and surface debris vanished almost instantly, leaving the water crystal clear. It's efficient, quiet, and works like magic. If you have a planted aquarium, this is an absolute must-have. I cannot recommend this brilliant piece of equipment highly enough—it's a total game-changer!

I set this up in my 75 gallon and was impressed that even the smaller unit was drawing in so much water. But I could not for the life of me get it to NOT slurp tons of air. No matter how high up or down below the surface I attached the body of this skimmer, the top ring would either remain floating and slurp VERY loudly as it was drawing in tons of air and filling the tank with bubbles, or it'd just immediately suck the top ring down beneath the surface, causing it to just NOT skim the surface at all, defeating the purpose of the whole thing. I tried it with and without the clear plastic ring and it made no difference.There may be a trick to it. But if it's this non-intuitive and fiddly to make run smoothly, I can't guarantee that the water level will never change or that a leaf won't be pulled in against the guard. I'll be going back to my old skimmer.

I rarely write reviews... Really only if something is really good...or bad. After trying probably 3 other surface skimmers plus a surface skimmer integrated to my protein skimmer...I finally found what I was looking for. This surface skimmer works perfect. I have it in a 33 gallon tank and it works flawlessly to remove the surface film I was having build up on the surface. And it looks great too. Very happy!

If you are agitating the surface of your aquarium, i.e, using a spray bar, this skimmer will constantly fill your tank with air bubbles. There’s no adjustments you can make other than stopping all surface agitation to stop the bubbles.

This unit certainly skims the film from the surface of the aquarium . . . . if the water level is perfect! When water level changes by 3/16" or so, the unit starts to suck air and becomes very noisy. You have to adjust the height of the unit or top off the tank water almost daily. If you like to fuss around a lot, this unit is for you. I prefer the cheaper unit that is much more forgiving of water level changes and has a larger sponge filter volume. This unit has a pretty small sponge filter.