Comments: I have tried this skimmer in a nano reef with my sea horses (with just 5 galons), not worked at all, running for more than 2 weeks, absolutely no skimming, all this skimmer did was just to put micro bubbles in the tank, very noisy, in a few words is useless, the worst purchase I have ever made in this hobby.

Comments: The Rio Nano Protein Skimmer is a good addition for my 10 gallon Salt water aquarium. It took a lot of time to put it together after I washed the parts. Once I put it on the tank it was creating a lot of bubbles in the tank after a few hours and adjustments I was able to get it working fine. The skimmer is doing its job. It is rather tall but if you have the H5 light fixture it will help hide it. Noise is not to loud but its still soon in my skimming process and could get louder as I adjust for dryer bubbles. I recommend this if you have time to work with it. Good for the price but in this hobby you get what you pay for!! Good luck!! :-)

Comments: I would have to say I don't know what all of the complaining is about. Sure when you first buy it you have to toy around with it a bunch. I have had this skimmer for 2 months now. Skims nicely, not noisy at all. Only real complaint is the width but thats it.
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<br />P.S. - Anyone who has one and thinks the noise level is really bad. Try closing the air valve all the way and pull up on the tube. It should produce nice fine bubbles and prevent bubbles from going into your tank!

Comments: This is by far the worst skimmer ever, I thought it was great after the initial break in pulling skimmate for about a week or so, then nothing... I tried adjusting and it just kept overflowing, 3 weeks later still nothing... I'm going to bite the bullet and get either a tunze or a aqua c...
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<br />this thing is just not worth the $$

Comments: I purchased this nano skimmer 2 months ago and have gone thru 2 impellers. Just the other day it stopped working all together. This is the worst piece of equipment I have ever purchased! I am now looking for a new skimmer.

Comments: Well, I read the reviews, too. I believed the good ones and discouonted the bad ones. I made a mistake. This skimmer is disfunctional. I tried for a week to get it to work. There are too many variables to adjust. It foamed too much. It foamed too little. It filled up with water too quickly. It quit working without cause. It's just a bad design and is totally ineffective. I don't know what the people are smoking who say they love it. I am pretty good with mechanical things and I just couldn't cut it. I'm taking mine back this afternoon. Plus, the insert is so poorly written (all kinds of proofreading errors) that it doesn't provide adequate information and you have to search the Internet to figure out how to use it. I've wasted two trips to my aquarium store and a week of my time with this piece of junk.

Comments: Skims ok, but mine tends to leak at the rear where the cup and the unit meet. Everytime i empty the cup i have to make sure the skimmer is not leaking. Gets to be a hassle after a while.

Comments: This seems like a decent skimmer for the price. I've only had it a couple of days so I haven't gotten anything in the collection cup. Could be because I just did a large water change and my salt level is at 1.018 and the directions say minimum of 1.020
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<br />Pro's: Small, quiet, appears to work.
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<br />Con's: The directions were terrible!! There is virtually no information and I wasn't even sure I put it together correctly. I think the way the filter cartridge slides in diagonally is cheesy and done as an after thought. I had to watch a posting on you tube before I figured out that there were settings that would increase the bubbles and water level.
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<br />Overall I am happy with the purchase and would recommend it.

Comments: Had to buy another filter within a week. Was not able to keep up with a 15 gallon mini reef tank. Might work well on a five gallon tank, or maybe a glass of water.

Comments: I love Rio! Just bought an Azoo Mignon Skimmer (read that review too) because it was so small and looked very neat for our 5 gal tank only to find within a week I'm about to return it because of several critical design issues. Then I saw this Rio Nano Skimmer which is a bit larger, Googled some reviews. Experts in the field who use it, rate it very well because of its simple rugged design and high skimming effectiveness in a fairly compact package. Novices and those who never used it poo-poo'd it because they believe the Rio brand is junk. I am using other Taam Rio pumps for other tanks and could not be happier with the quality and price. Within 48 hours (to break it in) I am already impressed with the quality of rather dry foam and versatile design to use other media and fine tune the skimmer output to suit my needs. Because it was a bit larger I did need mod the hood to accommodate, only took 15 minutes with a Dremel, looks great! Rio ROCKS!

Comments: I knew some people said it was loud. But I didn't know it was that loud. I have it in my bedroom and once I heard it, there was no way I was running it in there. I also heard that you need to break it in and then it will be a little quieter, but I didn't have the tolerance or patience to find out. I guess it would be a ok skimmer (for the price) if it wasn't in your bedroom.

Comments: It works. It skims, but is very hard to tune just right. Too many combinations to adjust to get it just right. Directions were horrendous and had to search out videos for installation on the web. This is pretty huge. I purchased it thinking it would be small and didn't want a huge skimmer hanging over my 10 gallon. It takes up about 1/3 of the with and it very tall and bulky. Would only recommend this skimmer if you are dead broke and need something to hold you over till you get a REAL skimmer.

Comments: I bought three of these skimmers when they first came out to experiment on nano setups.This product can't even filter a 10 gallon efficiently.Inconsistent foam production.Noisy and weak.Don't waste your money. I won't even use one on a quarantine tank.

Comments: It ran fine for about 2 months and produced a cup of waste every week. However, one day the impeller shaft broke making the skimmer useless. There was no way to replace it since they don't make impeller shafts for it. Im my opinion it is fine for a very small tank since the pump is much too weak for a bigger tank. Save your money and buy the tunze nano or the remora nano, much better skimmers by a mile. You simply cannot call the Tamm Rio a skimmer, it more of a decorative noise maker.

Comments: 3 stars is an accurate rating for this skimmer. It can be useful if your tank is less then 10 gallons and is lightly stocked or has additional filtration/circulation. The unit will produce a limited amount of skimmate. An additional problem is that the pump is undersized. With the venturi running, the actual output is around 70 GPH, not the 110 which is stated.
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<br />We

Comments: I have given this filter/skimmer combo every chance, and just cannot recommend it to anyone. The instructions are vague in the extreme, it is hard to adjust to get proper amount and ration of skimmate, and worst of all, it will not draw properly! If the level of the water in your tank is anything less than brimming full, the unit will not maintain a vacuum, and will stop working! I can put up with loud, hard to adjust, hard to clean, expensive, whatever...but to come home from work and find your filter -not running-, and you don't know how long it's been out....that is simply -inexcuseable-. This purchase has been a grave disappointment, and now I have to spend another 130$ or so to get a -real- protein skimmer that will work aside from my HOB filter.
<br />Please, when you see this unit advertised, do yourself a favor, and just walk right on past it.

Comments: This is a great product, once you set it up with the mod i made, you never had to set up again. All you have to do is make it take water only from the surface.

Comments: As others have stated, this skimmer is on the noisy side but my real beef is that it is totally inconsistent. It will produce a rather wet foam for a few hours and then spaz out and fill the collection cup with clear water within minutes. A search of message boards turns up many others with similar experiences.
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<br />At this point I may be looking into removing the airline tube and modding this with an air stone to make it more reliable.

Comments: Once you get the skimmer set up it works like a charm but the directions dont tell you how to do anything and its difficult to understand at first... but if you cant get past setting in up it works awsome

Comments: I have a 5.5 gal reef tank.. Loaded with 35 different pieces of live coral... This is the perfect skimmer, with the hang on the back design that doesn't take up extra space in your tank... Works great right off the start.. Price and quality in one package.... I've tried others, by far this is the cream of the crop....

Comments: This skimmer is great, it does have a small micro bubble problem. Took 30 hours to fully break in. It started to pull a lots of junk out of the tank. I would say give it a try.

Comments: it works really great keep my tank very clean now that i have this skimmer i bought more fishes that i cant have before thanks.

Comments: For the price this is a great skimmer. There are a few problems with the venturi, and some micro bubbles get thru. it skims pretty good though.

Comments: Pro:
<br />- Cheap
<br />- Designed pretty well. Fits to fish tank. Filtration cup easily removed. Water return, and intake pipes, fits into existing system without much problems.
<br />- Does a decent job skimming
<br />- Started pumping water without too much hassle.
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<br />Cons:
<br />- A little bit noisy
<br />- Little to no instruction manual
<br />- Carbon filter doesn't securely fit anywhere. A chemical filtration only, not a mechanical filtration.
<br />- Some little bubbles returned to fish tank.

Comments: First night, the collection cup was overflowing when I woke up. Barely turned it down and the thing wouldn't remove anything. After many days of use, I don't leave the thing on when I'm not home.

Comments: I love this Rio Nano! For the price it far exceeded my expectations. I have a similar "Ramora Nano" that cost almost $150. Though the Ramora is a good product it's terribly overpriced, when you compare it to the Rio Nano!! I worked and added some filtration to it but all in all it does the job on my 10g nano reef. could use a overflow box though, for asthetics.

Comments: I got it to work at first, but then it just stops. You need to keep pulling out the tub and jiggling the pump then it starts again. I could not get it to run for more than a few hours. Too, bad it would have been perfect and looked like it was going to.

Comments: Very good skimmer for my 15 gallons.
<br />A little bit difficult to adjust but then it skimmed very well and not noisy at all , and no micro-bubbles.

Comments: For the price point, I can't NOT give this a 5. Works fine out of the box, but for a little better performance, I'd recommend hooking up a small air pump w/ a decent valve to the venturi. Oh, P.S. the instructions suck!

Comments: I have used about every cheap skimmer I can find for a nano tank and this one is the best. It works great for its size and is low profile so it doesn't detract from the looks of the tank. It does have a couple minor drawbacks but I will overlook those for the low price.

Comments: you pay for what you get

Comments: Great little performer! A little touchy to adjust the skimming at first, but after that it works well. I added an extra sponge to the filter, and that helps too.

Comments: It works! I would only change two things. The venturi tube needs a flex hose extension with an air flow control valve. this would make it easier to adjust the amount of air to the skimmer.
<br />and second, there needs to be a place to actually secure the filter cartride in the last chamber. Oh, and supply a spunge or other material for the last chamber to eliminate micro bubbles. Other than that it seems to be a good product worthy of it's small price.