I was in a local fish store, City Pets, and right before I was about to leave I noticed a bright red and white skimmer in the distance. I walked over to the shelf and noticed it was a Vertex Alpha 170 cone skimmer. Up to this point, I actually hadn’t seen an Alpha cone skimmer in person. So I immediately went to work inspecting it. The first thing I did was remove the collection cup and lid to see how they attached. The collection cup screws into the neck of the skimmer to form a solid seal. The lid, like most other skimmer lids simply sits on top of the collection cup.
Vertex Alpha 170 Cone Skimmer
I put the collection sup back onto the skimmer and began inspecting the plumbing on the output side of the skimmer. I twisted the red vertical pipe that adjusts the skimmer’s internal water level to see how it worked. Upon further tinkering with the Alpha skimmer, I noticed the base didn’t seem to sit directly on the store’s shelf. I leaned the skimmer body over and noticed the entire skimmer sitting on rubber feet. This is great for noise reduction obviously. And when I looked at the pump, I noticed it also had rubber feet. Additionally, the pump is soft plumbed to the skimmer body. There is a piece of flexible tubing connecting the skimmer pump to the body which will also decrease any vibrations the pump would normally cause. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the skimmer in action on anyone’s aquarium, but YouTube is here to help with that.
