EuroReef RC-500 Dual Needle Wheel Skimmer

This is the EuroReef RC-500 right out of the box. It is 30 inches tall made from 12 inch diameter acrylic. This skimmer replaced a Reef Science Dual Beckett Injector Skimmer.

It is designed for a tank in the area of 500 gallons. You could say its a bit over-sized for my setup but it allows room to grow in the future.

The needle wheels are housed in dual EuroReef SP4 pumps which are re-branded and highly modified GEN-X 4100 pumps.

Foam is generated by drawing in air into a venturi. The air bubbles are finally chopped with the needle wheel pictured to the left.

NOTE: EuroReef went out of business back around 2009.

EuroReef RC-500 installed and bubbling away

The skimmer is feed directly by the overflow chamber and enters the skimmer in the back (not pictured).

The foam is produced by dual SP4 (GEN-X 4100) pumps. The skimmer rated to consume only 90w of power which is significantly lower than the several amps needed by my dual beckett skimmer.

The skimmer comes with a 1.5 inch true union ball valve to adjust the water level in the skimmer. I leave this full open and instead used a 1.25 inch gate valve for fine tuning.

Damaged needle wheel impeller

Shortly after the skimmer was setup one of the needle wheel pumps jammed. Upon taking the pump apart the coating of the impeller was shaved off.

Plastic Shavings from the needle wheel

This picture shows some of the plastic material that was removed from the pump.

After a good cleaning and smoothing out the pump continued to operate fine.

I'm constantly having impeller issues with the SP4x pumps, figure they you will need to replace them every year or so. This page documents how the EuroReef RC-500 Repairs while in use.

First 24 Hours of Skimmate Production

This is the skimmate collected in the first 24 hours of running. This is a considerable amount of dark skimmate.

I added some rubber bands around the neck of the skimmer to get a better grip on it to remove the collection cup.