Help Please! Which Skimmer Should I Buy?

[saltwatershark]

I'm setting up a 610 gallon tank with a 240 gallon sump/frag tank and a 29 gal acclimation tank (about 880 gallons total H20). It'll be a mixed reef using a Ca reactor and 2 part, ozone, UV, carbon and GFO. I'm trying to find an external skimmer and need your advice on which skimmer to use. The my reef creations Orca Pro 2 and Orca Pro 3 look superb, but so do others like the super reef octopus. Can anyone give me some advice here? What do you have and do you recommend it? Plenty of discussion threads out there but I thought I'd ask this question to the large reef tank focus group. Price really isn't a big limiter here because I'll wait and save for the right one. That said I don't want to go crazy and drop $6K on a royal exclusiv.... Please weigh in and help me! Thank you for your time.

 

[slief]

You are going to get a lot of opinions on this one. I have a 600 gallon system. I use an Alpha 300 and love it. If I were in your shoes, I would be looking at a BK Supermarin 300 with the Red Dragon 3 pump and a self cleaning head. Having owned BK made skimmers, I can say from experience that their quality is second to none and they work great.

Having said that, if power consumption and regular weekly maintenance is not an issue, a large dual beckett skimmer powered by an Iwaki 100 would be a great option as well. My only contention with beckett style skimmers is the regular maintenance required to keep the becketts running optimally and the power draw and heat transfer that comes with running the pressure pumps needed to drive them. I switched from a large Barr dual beckett skimmer to my Alpha and it was a great move for me. My Alpha has a self cleaning head and the only maintenance I do is drain the collection cup into a 1 gallon jug as needed and clean the cup/neck every 6 or so months when I clean the pumps. It runs/skims like a sewing machine and never skips a beat. It's quiet and extremely efficient.

There are also these new RLSS skimmers that have variable DC pumps which appear to be nicely made but the jury is still out on the overall quality of the skimmers and pumps. On the other hand, the BK Supermarin is arguably one of the best skimmers out there in its class. I like the Deltec skimmers but their pumps are not nearly the quality of the Red Dragons and as such are overpriced in my humble opinion due to the pump failure rates.