Automatic Skimmer Neck Cleaner (ANC) with Lid

After many years in the hobby running protein skimmers on my systems & never really getting the skimmer consistently ‘dialed in’ for optimum performance, I started to believe it could be because I wasn’t cleaning the collection cup often enough.... so, I bought the ANC for my Regal 300 external skimmer. It runs every 2 hrs for 20 seconds and has made a noticeable improvement on the performance of the skimmer. I still have to adjust airflow and bubbles regularly to align with bio-load demand & to stay as ‘dialed-in’ as I can... but, the utIlization of the ANC has allowed the bubbles to consistently push the organics into the cup better than when I did not have the ANC in operation. I have not experienced a measure-able reduction of nitrate or phosphate since installing the ANC, (and still have to keep up with regular maintenance / water changes, etc.) but it is clear to me that the performance of the skimmer has improved. If you don’t have time to clean your skimmer cup every couple days or every week, this is a nice add-on. This is something you get once you have everything else (filtration, lighting, flow, etc) optimized. If you have a limited budget,,, get all the ‘mission critical’ things right before you buy one of these. As this is a nice to have piece of equipment. I would say it certainly makes ongoing maintenance easier and is another enhancement that helps keep my system running optimally.

The idea of cleaning the inner portion of the Protein Skimmer neck is great. However this product falls a little short of optimum performance as it does not clean the outer portion of the neck.
The twin squeegee blades only goes down inside the neck. However, gunk still accumulates on the outer part of the neck and the inner walls of the collection cup.
This results in manual cleaning of the neck and inner portion of the collection cup.
After installing the unit I noticed it was not cleaning the neck as well as it should. It was leaving large chunks of junk still stuck to the inside of the neck. I contacted BRS about the problem and they agreed to reach out to Reef Octopus for a solution. After two weeks I did not see any follow-up or heard from anybody about the problem. So so I decided to fake the unit apart and see what could be contributing to the lack of performance of ANC.
I quickly found out that the twin squeegee blades that are supposed to be be removing the gonk from inside of the neck was pretty loose. The 4 stainless steel screws that are used to hold the twins squeegee blade to the actual frame of the cleaner was actually loose and therefore they rubber squeegee blades was barely touching the inner walls of the neck. I adjusted the squeegee blades so they would fit tightly against the inner part of the neck and reassembled the unit. Ran it a few times to test and it did a marvelous job cleaning what I would consider 100% of the surface on the inside. I think this is something Reef Octopus and BRS could actually do a better job off by either documenting it as part of their troubleshooting steps or making sure customers know that this is something that needs adjustment upon assembly or, possibly periodic adjustment after ongoing use. In addition the suggested frequency of cleaning from Reef Octopus is 15 seconds every 6 hours. Depending on how much gunk your system produce or your protein skimmer extracts from the water this is just not sufficient. I modify the settings by running thr ANC for 30 seconds every 2 hours. This is done via the oscillating programming options on my Neptune Fusion. After making these minor changes the unit now performed flawlessly.

Pros- keeps neck clean, less overall maintenance and annoying neck and cup cleaning I used to do weekly, heavy duty good materials and components, used about 6 months with no issues or failures, increased my skimate and performance of my skimmer, probably only company that I found that makes neck cleaners which is why I bought from Reef Octo

Cons- Bought it specifically for my Reef Octo 200sss which has a float switch, this does not come with a float port so I will have to modify it as I already had some accidental overflows without it, the plug end to power is a huge box like an old game console system, hard to support to a timer which was also hard to find since I don't use a Neptune to control it, should've been at least like a laptop power cord, I was hoping on going 6 months to a year without having to clean the entire thing but after 3 months I found it slowly decreasing skimate because so much overall gunk builds up everywhere else besides the neck, poor instructions like all Reef Octo products

Overall still happy with it and consider it a great maintenance relief and a skimmer performance booster

This definitely help skim production on this skimmer

The product works great. Easy to assemble and install. Instructions were very clear. It keeps my skimmer neck very clean. Really like that since I have an external skimmer.

Upset to unbox and find out that there is no neck peice

I have this hooked up to the SRO 2000 and I love it. My Reefkeeper runs it for 15 seconds every four hours. I love the satisfaction of hearing it click on, and knowing that it is performing well. It is easy to clean which means you are more likely to do it.

I love this product! It is so quiet you don't know it is running. It keeps the skimmer working at it's peak performance. I wished I had bought this a long time ago. I have been running well over a year and have not had issues. I have it controlled by my Apex aquarium controller. I have got my moneys worth out of it.

Works real good and quiet. You will need at least 5.00" clearance above your skimmer for this to fit . Also I used a $9.00 Brinks digital timer I got from Walmart, it can't handle this gadget and burned out on first use.. so spend the extra $$$ and get a better timer...

This neck cleaner is the perfect companion to my Octopus 250 skimmer - which I absolutely love. Worth the investment!