Are skimmer neck cleaners worth it?

[John08007]

It is my ultimate goal to reduce the maintenance time required on my tank. I have often thought that one of these neck cleaners like the one made by avast would help a lot. I have a bubble magnus curve 7. I get some dark skimmate and I also get a lot of very dark "skum" built up on the inside vertical tube of the cup. I am thinking having one of these cleaners would cause all that built up waste to make it into the cup.

Then next would be a larger waste collector. Anyone have experience with one of these?

 

[sunken3]

I have a reef octopus skimmer with the added neck cleaner and the extra waste collector and delay timer. all are helpful, though the waste collector is the best part.. saves me from having to fuss with the skimmer cup and it shuts off the skimmer when full so i have no overflow issues. the neck cleaner defintitely helps, but you still need to clean the skimmer occasionally because the gross skimmate doesn't just collect where the squeegee hits.

 

[BadSquishy]

Yes!! It’s made a huge difference for my skimmer. I’ve got a Skimz monster mini that is great, but I noticed I was getting good skim mate for a little while… until the neck became caked in green/black gunk. Then I would barely get anything in the cup until I cleaned it. So I recently got a small swabbie and now I consistently get such nice, dark skimmate and I never have to clean out gunk! I just drain it out from the outlet at the bottom of the cup when it gets full (I attached some tubing and a ball valve). Super efficient. Works like it’s supposed to. I love my swabbie!

 

[coralfishreef]

Maybe if your skimmer is producing more wet skimmate than dry skimmate. You could have the skimmate drain to a larger collection container and clean the skimmer cup and neck less often.

I prefer to have the skimmer produce a thicker drier skimmate. The swabbie helped keep the neck clean and the skimmate went into the skimmer cup, but there was also a lot of skimmate caked onto the swabbie.

I ran the swabbie on a skimmer for a 54 gallon tank for about a year and while it worked, I found it easier to run the skimmer and empty the cup without the swabbie. The swabbie would probably be great on a large 200+ gallon tank.

 

[Spieg]

I thought about getting one until a friend showed me how his just wipes the tube until a big chunk drops back into the bubble chamber. Don't see that as an improvement over cleaning the cup/tube at the sink.

 

[trmiv]

I had a swabbie but ended up removing it. I found that it was more of a pain cleaning the neck cleaner than just cleaning the skimmer cup regularly.

 

[Wyvern]

I clean my skimmer cup weekly.

It's absolutely vile, but 5 minutes at most to do. (That's what she said :()

Something else to break.

 

[SPS2020]

I prefer not to use the one which came with the Red Sea Skimmer 300. In fact, I removed it and made a silicone plug for the cap so that it can be removed completely. After initially using the neck cleaner, it just cakes up and has the chance to drop concentrated skimmate back down in the skimmer body. IMO, it's much more efficient to just keep things clean so the skimmer works at 100%.

 

[BadSquishy]

I’m kinda surprised so many people had problems with theirs… I haven’t experienced any of these issues with mine.

 

[G Santana]

I thought about getting one until a friend showed me how his just wipes the tube until a big chunk drops back into the bubble chamber. Don't see that as an improvement over cleaning the cup/tube at the sink.

I couldn't agree more!!!
I clean my cup a couple of times a week, what's the fuss lol
Having a squeegee go round and round is not cleaning the cup and neck, not to mention what falls back into the skimmer body, now you have condensed muck floating in your skimmer.

 

[Paleozoic_reefer]

I just think this is one of those chores in this hobby that just needs to be done manually like glass scrapping or bed cleaning. The more equipment I tend to add to my system the more chances of something failing (or worse) occurs and not to mention another coveted electrical outlet is used up.