I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my new skimmer arrived today on schedule. The bad news is that it was apparently damaged during shipment. The main skimmer body was cracked and broken in two different places, so I think it must have had a very rough trip getting here. I already contacted the vendor and eveything is going to be taken care of, which is great. However, the skimmer was a custom order from Germany, which is why it took so long to get it in the first place, and now I’ll have to wait for a new order to be placed, then the skimmer has to be built, then shipped from Germany, and then it has to make it through customs and homeland security again. So this could be a very significant delay in getting the new tank running.
However, there are a few possible options that might allow me to get running sooner. The collection cup on my custom skimmer arrived in perfect shape, so there is a chance that I can use that shorter collection cup with the standard (not custom shortened) skimmer body and still have everything fit inside the stand. I’m going to have to call around over the next few days to check and recheck various measurements to see if that is a possibility. It would be great if that works out because the distributor has a few of the standard skimmers in stock, so I could get that in a week or two instead of multiple months.