OASE Indoor Aquatics CrystalSkim 350 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!

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.

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 :)

I run it without the floating piece due to it sucking air and creating microbubbles. Once that was removed, no more issues. Now we'll see how we'll it cleans the surface of my Fluval Sea 13.5. Because my reef tank is small I'm running it on the lowest speed.

The media could not be loaded. I got the Crystalskim 350 to help with the surface build up I was experiencing in my 75 gal aquarium. As others have stated, it’s not the easiest thing to set up. It is way too powerful. Even on the lowest speed setting and having the filter as far down in the water as it could go, I still was experiencing micro-bubbles. To solve this, I replaced the provided extremely coarse filter pad with a more fine pad that i cut to size. That solved the issue. Although, i expect this is going to lead to more frequent maintenance. My other complaint is the unit i received is grey, not black. Which is unfortunate because my background is black and i was hoping this would blend in. It doesn’t. Construction seems solid, it is quiet, and it made a visible difference in about 30 min. This is my first Oase product, so only time will tell. So far, it does what it’s supposed to. But since i had to modify a $35 surface skimmer, and i received the wrong color, i’m rating the Oase Crystalskim 350…3 stars.*Edit*The micro-bubbles came back. The only solution I can find is lowering the flow rate all the way down. Which reduced the filter’s effectiveness significantly. The filter is not capable of keeping the surface clean on its lowest setting. So its either a semi-clean surface, or microbubbles. I’m knocking this piece of junk down to 1 star. This is what i get for not getting a Fluval. If the Fluval sk400 was easier to find in America, I would have never went with this hunk of crap in the first place. Avoid this purchase.

I use it for my 15 gallon Nuvo Fusion saltwater aquarium, works pretty good. Got to take it apart and clean it once in awhile especially in a saltwater aquarium. Keeps my tank nice and clear. And it is easy to take apart and clean.

This is for no flow freshwater tanks. If you have output flow and wave pump this thing is just garbage. It has to have a level surface to work. It will lots of blow micro bubbles until you find the sweet spot which you have a millimeter to play with . As soon as your water level changes or evaporates later on that day, back to purging and bubbling out the aquarium. The floating top won’t rotate without the flow cut off. You need a hang on back filter with no flow pumps for this to work. Reefers, spend your money elsewhere.