OASE Koi Pond Skimmers

In building a larger rubber lined  pond, SkagiTek took advantage of installing the newly designed OASE  BIOsys OP-300 skimmer.  We were impressed with the water volume the specifications stated in which it should handle and the simple, yet large capacity leaf basket. We installed the skimmer and found it simple enough with the rubber gasket and screws to secure a water proof connection to the liner.  Our location for the new 5200 gallon pond is located under a very large tree. Knowing from past years the amount of leaves this tree drops,  we knew the importance of having a good performing skimmer was going to play in keeping this pond free of leafs. It was our hope that the skimmer could eliminate the bad choice of location. Locating a pond under any tree is known as a bad idea because of the expected fall out of leaves, twigs, etc.

Pond in place and working well in time for the Fall of 2002. The large tree as expected, dropped most all of the leaves right into the pond. Gee, it's just what is needed for this test. Very few leaves found the ponds bottom, while the rest were fortunately taken off the pond's surface by way of the OASE BIO OP-300 skimmer. Removing the leaves from the pond's bottom was only required two times. Mostly due to my pickiness of maintaining a clean pond.   Barely a net full each time.

Daily empting of the skimmer's large basket was required due to the shear volume of leaves. While the skimmer basket does hold a large amount, I found that even then, the pump was still able to pull ample water through the well packed skimmer.  When we skipped a day and really let the basket get packed, the skimmer still continued to perform well.  With the skimmer  packed,  water still was able to get through the packing to the pump. No amount of leaf plugging ever resulted in keeping water from getting to the pump.  The only regret in letting the basket go an extra day was a heaver basket to empty. 

Two items I felt could use some improvement. Both are about the basket's plastic handles.

1). The basket handles retain the basket downward by latching to the side of the skimmer. This latching method could use a little more retaining plastic on the side of the skimmer to help keep the handles latched. Noting here that it does not stay too well from our installation because our packing of the soil on the outside of the skimmer is slightly pushing inward which is creating our problem. 

2) One last item about the baskets handles. Small request to OASE if they are reading this, consider extending the length of the basket's handles up out of the expected water level. The winter water is a bit nippy to be reaching into in order to remove the basket. Brrr... Our solution was thick rubber gloves.

Over all, this skimmer performs very well. Our poor location was righted by using a well designed and performing skimmer. I was amazed at the amount of leaves the basket was able to hold and still leaving the  skimmer able to perform. Ease of cleaning was also nice. This skimmer remains our choice of skimmers! 

The pond's surface remains clean!

   Bill Putnam
   SkagiTek

Note: Our testing did not have a pump inside the skimmer. A 1/4 hp Aqua-flo pump was used and located about 20 feet from the skimmer. This pump can pump up to 5400 GPH. Our valve setting permitted about 70-80% (3500-4000 GPH) of this water rate to be pulled through the skimmer.  Use of three pond surface jets also improved surface circulation which benefited the testing results.