Here are some photos of the vertex IN-250 in action. I think the Vertex is the king of the low-end after having a few weeks experience with one. Hydor's king of midrange, Bubbleking king of high end and Tunze king of the small form-factor. My only gripe is the IN-250 is so damned tall and the cup's a bit of a pain to remove without spilling skimmate. You need like 32" to remove the cup n all. But the performance is pretty damned good.

I have a watt meter at home I might be able to test it out with but from experience every pump I've tested tests up to double the rated wattage once head pressure is applied. That's the reason I bought the kill-a-watt because I was pretty sure some things on my tank were sucking more power than what was on the labels. Plus you may be comparing it to an older euroreef with a Sedra pump. Euroreefs now use Gen-X pumps which is the same damned pump as a Resun (which the Vertex uses) except the Resun is hermetically sealed around the heatsink while most of the Gen-X models aren't (opened up a couple resuns to confirm the suspicion).

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p.../iphone043.jpg
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the nog on there looks pretty nice... I wonder how this rates up to the octo extreme... decisions decisions.

SO, I finally got around to taking some pictures. These shots are from earlier tonight so say 24-32hrs of running. I moved from a Tunze 9010 so adjusting this has been a little hit and miss for me. About half the skimmate that you see is a direct result of me overflowing the skimmer a little as I play around with "tuning" it. Still not sure if I've got it set properly but I guess time will tell!!

Enjoy

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http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera031.jpg

Delicious!

We went out and fkshiu tested the Vertex 250.

I'll let fkshiu post about the results.

Cheers,
Vic

OK. Had a chance to check out Aquatic Addictions today in Abbotsford (formerly Hidden Reef) and brought along my trusty Kill-a-Watt and Dwyer RMA-22 to test a Vertex IN-250 which they had running on one of their coral tanks.

Results: 900 LPH at 67 watts.

As expected, it's quite a bit less than the listed wattage of the Resun pump as a water pump of 145 watts. However, it does fall short of a few other common needlewheel pumps in terms of air draw vs. electrical draw.

To give you a comparison here are a few examples:

Eheim 1260 - ~950 LPH at 52W (found on bigger Deltecs and ERs)
AquaBee 2001 - ~700-800 LPH at 38W (found on smaller Deltecs and Bubble Magus)
Sicce PSK2500 - ~900 LPH at 25W (found on Bubble Masters, big Tunzes, Octo Pros)
Sedra 5000 - ~700-800 LPH at 35W (found on ERs and ASMs)
Sedra 9000HO - ~1000-1100 LPH at 47W (found on Warner Marines)
Red Dragon1500 - 1600 LPH at 38W (found on Bubble King Mini200)
Gen-X 6000 - 1080 LPH at 60W (found on ERs)

Of course, this measure isn't what solely makes a skimmer. There are many other factors as well. However, it is a good objective measure of performance.

The build quality is not bad at all. Some downsides are that the collection cup connector is pretty precarious, the bubble plate does not look like it is removable for cleaning and the bubble plate itself looks homemade - i.e. it's just some holes drilled into a piece of plastic as opposed to the finely machined convex holes of higher quality plates that will do a better job of controlling and directing bubble flow.

All in all, it is quite good bang for the buck at its price point. The longterm question is whether the Resun pump will hold up over time and how it will react to meshmodding.

PS - thanks for Seahorse_Fanatic for the ride and the bottle of Sprite. And thanks for Aquatic Addictions for letting me crawl around their equipment and giving us free t-shirts to boot!

I'm pretty sure that pump is the same OEM as the Sedra / Gen-x / Sen / Aqua Euro. So it's probably not bad at all.

My Vertex IN-100 pulls 20 watts when producing foam, 42 watts if air inlet plugged and just pumping water. Tested using a Kill-O-Watt meter.

I would assume the 250 is the same, you could half the rated wattage when the pump is producing foam

For you guys that have bought these skimmers, what other skimmers have you previously owned that you are making your judgements against?

I'm on the hunt for a new skimmer. I don't want to cheap out, but if they are actually fairly good when compared to the industry leaders, then I'm all in for a good deal. :D

Also, sorry if I missed it, but where are you guys finding the best price on these skimmers? J&L seems a bit high...?

What's your definition of an industry leader?