Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Buy the Aqua Medic Turboflotor 1000 Hang on Skimmer

If your hobby is reef tanks or saltwater aquariums, you know that having a good protein skimmer is a vital piece of equipment. My first reef tank was a 75 gallon glass aquarium that I had originally housed freshwater fish. This article will focus on just the aspects of why you should not buy Aqua Medic's Turboflotor 1000 protein skimmer.

1. Price
2. Quality
3. Construction
4. Size
5. Too many parts
6. Weak Pump
7. Noisy
8. Sensitive
9. Collection Cup Can Overflow
10. High Maintenance

1) Price: The cost of a Turboflotor 1000 can run up to $250 depending on whether you buy locally or ship. The advantage of online/mail order is that it is usually where you'll find the better deals, but keep in mind you'll be paying for shipping fees.

2) Quality: When I received my Turboflotor, right out of the box, there were broken pieces. I called the online vendor where I placed my order. They told me it would take 3 weeks to get parts to me. I had to argue with the sales representative over the phone that I needed the parts "yesterday" because a protein skimmer is not something you can just let forget about if your tank is up and running with live stock.

3) Construction: This goes part and parcel with quality. The construction and design was complicated. Even the directions were difficult to understand. The plastic seemed thin and some parts were flimsy and easily broken….hence the issue I have with the quality.

4) Size: The Turboflotor 1000 I purchased was a "hang on the back" model. It hangs on the outside of the tank. I had filled my 75 gallon tank with live rock, gravel and water. I estimate it probably weighed around 1000 pounds easily. When the Turboflotor 1000 came, I TRIED to hang it off the back of the tank. Though my tank was already around 6 inches away from the wall, it was not far enough away to hang the Turborflotor 1000. I wasn't about to drain the tank just so I could move it out a few more inches to accommodate the skimmer! I ended up having to hang the skimmer off the side of my tank. It looked silly and took away from the aesthetics of the tank itself.

5) Too Many Parts: If you are someone who likes to fiddle with many parts and pieces, this skimmer is for you. However, most of us do not relish the thought of loosing parts during cleaning, parts breaking, or the need to constantly adjust parts to get the skimmer to even WORK. Cleaning it was laborious at best.

6) Weak Pump: The pump is the life line of the skimmer. You can have the best skimmer in the world, but if the pump is not matched to the skimmer, it renders the skimmer nearly useless. The pump that comes with the Turboflotor 1000 is not well matched.

7) Noisy: Wow! When I first started up the skimmer, it made some awful gurgling, sucking noises. It sounded like water draining out of a bathtub nearing the end when the loud sucking noise accompanies the water flowing away.

8) Sensitive: I spent so much time fiddling with the many parts to get the skimmer to work just so. Once I get the parts set to where it is actually skimming, it would work for a day or two and then back to nothing. I knew it was not working because I had a different (much smaller) hang on skimmer and it was pulling out skimmate whereas the Turboflotor could not. Worthless!

9) Collection Cup Can Overflow: In my short relationship with the Turboflotor 1000, it overflowed twice, due to no apparent reason, spilling all the stinky, gross skimmate all over the carpet along with additional salt water from the tank. It makes a wonderful mess.

10) High Maintenance: It required twice weekly to weekly cleaning. Owning this skimmer was a nightmare! It was so touchy to even get it to work. When it would finally work, it would require cleaning. Ironically, once cleaned, it would stop working again. Hey, doesn't cleaning generally get something to work again because it's now "clean?" Not so with the Turboflotor. Even the sales rep told me to clean everything else but the collection cup, or to not give it too good a cleaning, that I should leave a thin film on the skimmer.

Here is an indication of the type of poor customer service that trickles down from Aqua Medic to the vendors. I tried looking up the website for Aqua Medic. I found it at www.aqua-medic.com When I clicked on the "products" button at the top right of the page, it takes me to a page that has "warnings" and "fatal errors" instead of a webpage displaying their various products. Frankly, I don't know how long the page has been "down," but one would think it would register on somebody's radar to make it priority to fix the page stat! After all, if Aqua Medic is trying to sell a product and a consumer is trying to look up information, it is not very settling when the manufacture's website is not even operational. Actually, upon more clicking around of the initial webpage, I discovered that NONE of the links work! Draw your own conclusions. I'm sure the Turboflotor 1000 works great for some people. But I am not one of them.

Take your hard earned money and buy just about anything else but the Turboflotor 1000 for your skimmer needs.