TOM Aquarium Surface Skimmer-canister and power filters

This surface skimmer takes some fiddling to get working properly.

In short, this will replace your filters normal intake tube, so right there is where most of your (potential) issues will come into play. For me the tube on this was the exact same size as the intake of my canister filter, which means I couldn't hook it up. I ended up taking the tube into a nearby Lowe's and searching for plastic (not metal) fittings that would work with it to get it hooked up.

The clear plastic part you can see in the photos is the float, after installing you'll need to lift that part out of the water so that the underside has air in it. You then gently lower it onto the water and the trapped air will make it float. The piece of plastic that sticks up the center is how you adjust how much suction there is, twist it until the float is skimming the water, but not strong enough to pull it completely under.

This will create noise, but with some tweaking you can minimize it.

I had never heard of the brand "TOM" before, but based on the pictures this one is exactly the same as the one offered by Hagen.

Caution: I maintain fully planted tanks, which includes floating plants. Unfortunately, floating plants will very easily clog this up. I somewhat expected that, but thought I'd try it anyways. I may keep trying at a later time with a very minimal amount of surface skimming to see if there can be a balance.

I too was having problems with the nasty film on top of my water. I have 2 eheims, 2217 and 2228. I hooked this up to my 2228 intake. Eheim offers a surface extractor for $40. The TOM was only around $11 so I thought I'd try it first. It is awesome. Just as advertised. The flex hose is removable and the little L fitting can be slid on in place of the flex hose. I hooked directly up to my U tube intake. I did this by removing the strainer on the end of the U tube and cut a little piece of eheim tubing (about 2", but it may vary for you) in order to fit the skimmer to the U tube. Great product. My surface is now crystal clear. As soon as I hooked it up, you could see the film being sucked right in. It's hard to tell, but the clear plastic strainer on the TOM moves freely and separate from the black portion. It floats on the surface. Twisting the black stick that goes down through the center of the strainer moves a stopper at the bottom and it's used to regulate the flow entering either the bottom of the device (as a regular intake would work) or the top of the device (clear strainer at the top). There is a fine balance and takes a little time to get the flow right, but not too bad. Very happy with purchase.

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This skimmer is on my 90 gallon HEAVILY planted aquarium; and I bought it to get rid of the film on top of the water. The skimmer comes with almost no directions; you just have to figure it out which isn't too hard.

By design, the clear piece with the inverted castle top floats, and by design (and depending on your filter flow rate) it shouldn't require much tweaking. I do not believe the device was intended for the size of filter I'm running so the concept of "float balance" as designed doesn't exactly work flawlessly for me. However, I'm using it far beyond it's intended capability bracket and therefore it does require a bit of tweaking and daily attention due to my high light an evaporation rate but I've negated that by using a rubber band to somewhat restrict the floating upper part of the device which has worked well.

BUT Overall this product is good. Could be better with simple engineering changes but whatever.... If you're semi-intelligent, have less than a 100 gallon aquarium and run less than 200 watts of compact fluorescent light you should be pleased. I gave it 5 stars because; although not perfect, it functions extremely well for the price.

I do not have any film on the top of the water any more!

I have this TOM skimmer hooked up to a Rena XP4 running full blast; and it isn't a straight connection with the parts from the box. You must take a piece of your Rena filter tubing and use it to connect the "bendy" part of the TOM skimmer to connect it to the Rena intake. I used a 1 inch piece, no big deal but I was curious when I bought mine so I thought you should know....

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Little to no directions on how to actually use this. It appears this same exact item is made for other companies under different names. I found a PDF 'manual' by searching for 'Hagen surface skimmer PDF'. A big part of the correct functionality of this device that I could not figure out was, a pocket of air must remain under the top portion for it to correctly float. It's a little tricky to get setup but once done, makes sense and is easily adjustable. The only time I really have to adjust it is when I feed the fish. I dial it all the way up so it's not surface skimming and is only pulling from the bottom. I then feed the fish and dial it back down so its clearing the crud off the top.

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I'm using this surface skimmer attached to an Aquaclear 10 HOB filter to remove surface scum in my marine tank. (I don't run a protein skimmer.) I had to cut the elbow adapter to make it fit into the Aquaclear intake but that was a 2 minute job. It takes a bit of fiddling to adjust it so the water flows in without making a lot of gurgling noise but once adjusted it works pretty good. The teeth are small so your fish and inverts don't get sucked in the filter.

Cons: Sometimes the floating arm will sink below the water's surface when large snails climb up on it. My snails enjoy the gunk that accumulates in the intake. The elbow adapter and flex hose didn't fit my filter, I had to cut to fit. Easy enough but it would have been better if there were some other adapter options.

Gave it 4 stars because it does take some work to figure out how to adjust the inner screw so the intake floats. Instructions are pretty much garbage. It definitely gets the scum off the top of the water. I wrote this review as I'm purchasing two more for my other tanks.