ever considdered the SHARK SK line of skimmers, I have a SK5 and works flawless, perfect adjusting, cup removing and all.

neatly and sturdy put together and price wise, you can easy buy a bigger model, for the same as some other brands.

Super reef octopus
 

They make a few that would fit tur price range and the ones with the bubble blaster pumps work great.

Im sold on Becketts.... Hands down.....430 lbs live rock.... 1 week later and a good cleaning.... and now i can tell when i put my hands in the tank just by looking at it LOL

I've owned the sm161, the nac 7 and the vertex. The skimz sm161 was by far the best in quality and performance making it my favorite of the three.

The best skimmer will be the one that utilizes a pump that pulls more air, something like 1200l/h or more.
Will be silent, reliable and easy to clean.
Look for Hero cone series with Eheim pumps, or skimmer with bubble blaster pump.

Anyone have a gen 3 vertex 250? narrowed it down to the vertex or the skimz. the vertex are solid skimmers, just a little too loud though. bb pumps cost about 1/2 the price of the skimmer itself.

Yes, and there is a good reason for that.
Don't make same mistake that many of us did by wasting money on worthless equipment that has nothing but promises.
Anything that will draw less then 600 l/h of air is not worth the time and money.
Like some one mentioned on here that "its the pump that makes the skimmer"
Look at Red Dragon pumps or ANY pump that pulls anything more then 1000 L/H air, it is significant portion of the skimmer price. If manufacturer does not say how much air skimmer pulls stay away from it.
jmtcw

I have the Sicce 2500 pump with the red devil pinwheel on my ATI BM200, the same pump as the SWC. I will definitely confirm the terrible restarts. But... the pump pulls in tonnes of air(1000 L/H), it's old as hell and works great with little to no maintenance, it's energy efficient, and dead silent. So in the end... how often do you turn off your skimmer? The only bad thing about it is that if I'm out for a few days and the power goes out then back on during that time, I won't be there to restart my skimmer, probably toasting the pump.... but it's $100 instead of the $400+ red dragon and also impossible to happen if I never get to go away for the weekend :P.

Skimmer
 

I replaced my Nac-7 with a vertex 180
And the Nac-7 was the better skimmer.
The onlything with the Nac-7 was the needle wheel impeller would break very often,other than that it was the best skimmer I ever owned.

PL 900 concrete adhesive from Home Depot will make it sometimes instead of very often