travisc's ultimate new-to-the-hobby newbie build. Dig it!

[Myka]

Originally Posted by RDNanoGuy

I'll step in a bit here as I'm helping Travis set up his tank. Travis had already purchased his skimmer before I stepped in to give him a hand. Myka I agree on paper the. ati cone seems a little on the small side but I think it will be ok.

Just because he already bought it, doesn't mean it should suffice. If you sell it now while it's still BNIB, you can get the best price, and move to a better suited skimmer.

Even if you do a quick search on Reef Central (simply because that's the largest audience to draw from), you will easily see that most people are running this skimmer on tanks in the 250-300 gallon range. There are no threads with people running the skimmer on tanks over 400 gallons which is a far cry from the 800-gallon system Travis has. Protein skimmer manufacturers never underrate their skimmers, if anything they overrate their skimmers.

Here is a review by Jake Adams (one of thee skimmer gurus), and he recommends to use it on tanks 400 gallons and less. Keep in mind he was paid to do the review. http://reefbuilders.com/2013/08/15/a...ly-affordable/

The only needle wheel skimmer the is any bigger is the supermarine 250. I think with Travis's goals for the tank it should suffice with a decent waterchange regime. Just in case it ends up needing an upgrade I made sure to build the sump large enough to fit the big bubble king.

Bubble King doesn't stop at the Supermarin 250. They go WAY beyond that - using needlewheels. I think the Supermarin 300 or the DeLuxe 400 would be better choices. Even the Supermarin 250 is under-sized for an 800-gallon system.

Check out the Bubble King website. http://royalexclusiv.net

To put it in perspective, one of my clients has a 375-gallon display with another 50 gallons of volume in the sump, and we have a Supermarin 300 on it - the model with two pumps, a RD3 Speedy and a 1500. The tank is lightly stocked and heavily fed and the skimmer is a good fit. I do weekly 15% water changes.

If you do the math, doing water changes on a tank that size, doing an extra 10% weekly to make up for the smaller skimmer, even using the cheapest salt available will still cost close to $1000/year not to mention extra RO/DI filters and the man hours to go get all that salt, mix it all up, and do that extra volume.

So why not put that money towards a bigger skimmer now and just save all the hassle of replacing it down the road? You can ignore my advice and those of many others if you do some research (most people do ignore advice once they've set their minds to something).