What equals a good skimmer?

#1 11-27-2012, 04:39 AM

I will have a total of about 75 gallons of net water in the sump and display. If my skimmer is rated for 80 - 120 gallons and I have a very low bioload (2 false percula clownfish), would my skimmer be good enough?

Or is a good skimmer the next size up? I want to start full zeovit but am not sure if my skimmer is good enough.

#2 12-02-2012, 05:13 AM

Bump.

Proteus · #3 12-02-2012, 05:25 AM

Yes it should be sufficient. What make do you have

Skimmerking · #4 12-02-2012, 05:38 AM

Out of all my skimmers that. I have owned which is pretty much every type of a skimmer out there other then the klas skimmer and a h&s skimmer. I have always shot for 2-3 times of what I can skim. Uou can always over skim but u can't under skim I believe that if u run into problems with uourntank like over feeding and extra nutrients you can always skim it out when u have a bigger skimmer.

Now if u want to runs wetter skim mate u can with a bigger skimmer if u have a smaller skimmer u can't do a lot like skim wet. The reason is the skimming is working overtime to keep up with the tank.

Myka · #5 12-02-2012, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChizerBunoi

I will have a total of about 75 gallons of net water in the sump and display. If my skimmer is rated for 80 - 120 gallons and I have a very low bioload (2 false percula clownfish), would my skimmer be good enough?

It depends what brand it is. There are a lot of poorly designed skimmers out there and many manufacturers hugely overrate their skimmers' abilities. Generally, the better brand of skimmers aren't overrated as much as cheaper brand skimmers. Personally, I like to get a good brand of skimmer that is rated for about double the capacity of my aquarium. I have a SWC 180 Cone on my 90-gallon (plus 15 in sump) reef which is rated for 150-gallons heavily stocked and 250-gallons lightly stocked. I like how this skimmer performs on my tanks' size. I have an SWC 120 Cone on my 50-gallon (plus 8 in sump) reef which is rated for 55-gallons heavily stocked and 90-gallons lightly stocked. I feel this skimmer is at the top of its ability on my 50-gallon, and think it would be best on a 40-gallon reef.

reefwars · #6 12-02-2012, 03:08 PM

Reef life support systems.....best Skimmers I've ever seen including bubble king....

Lampshade · #7 12-02-2012, 10:07 PM

http://www.aquariumcontrollers.com/files/skimmers.html

This is a pretty old chart, but fairly accurate from what I've seen. My biggest thing for skimmers isn't really what they pull, as long as it's consistent. They need to skim enough to keep the nutrients down obviously, but a skimmer that you need to mess with constantly will be pretty much useless in the long run.

For example. the neck on the coralife skimmer is small, so trying to balance your skimmate from a wet to dry skimmate is a VERY fine adjustment, this also changes with air pressure and water level, so if you have your sump water move 1/8", you go from a wet skim to no skim. It was VERY frustrating, half the time I'd not be skimming, and the other half I'd be dumping all my skimmate back into the tank. After trying a few others, I now have an ATI skimmer with a nice large neck, I have a very consistant skim, and never have to worry about it. I've set it to a fairly dry skim, and it does this for weeks/months without me touching it.(unless a crab goes down the overflow... those guys love my skimmer intake)

Anyways, whatever you end up thinking of getting ask on this forum for past experiance, there's some good low cost skimmers that preform very well, and other high cost ones that are not worth the plastic they're made from. Some people like Skimmer King have owned pretty much everything, so know far far too much about skimmers and have very good advice on what to get.