Anyone with experience with the Reef Octopus DCS200 INT?

[ojonas81]

I ordered my RLSS R8-I 8 back in May and as some of you may know, it still have not been released. I am on the verge of not being able to wait any longer so my question is, does anyone have any experience with the Reef Octopus DCS 200 INT? It has the Diablo pump and look s promising but was not able to find anything written about it here (or at least not enough to make a judgement on if it is good or not).

I am especially interested in noise level and performance. My tank will be a 150G +40G sump + 20G fuge with a total water volume around 200G or so.

 

[jda]

I have the 350 (12" model), so I can offer that if you want... the pump is not super quiet, but it is also not horrible. The silencer works about like what you might expect - good, but not silent. The skimmer appears to work about as expected. I don't think that it skims any better than the Octopus that I have with the Sicce pump. I have no idea what the controllable pump brings to the table, but I also have not experimented much with slower speeds (I just slowed it down yesterday and re-adjusted the gate, so it might be too soon for me to tell).

FWIW, I have it in the same sump next to a ER 12-2 with the dual Sedra 5000 pumps. The EuroReef skims a lot better than the octo, but I guess that two pumps with more air will do that.

 

[ojonas81]

Quiet is important to me.

Found Skimz skimmer as well that seems to have gotten good reviews in general. Does anyone know if Skimz SM163 Monzter is doing a good job?

 

[newaquarist]

I have one and would highly recommend that you stear clear. There is a known problem of pump failure after 8 months. What's more coralvue customer service is poor -- in my case they don't have replacements in stock and it's now been a week. Their communication has been poor, I have to call them repeatedly to learn what's going on. It's too bad because it's a good unit when it works.