I run a Bubble King Supermarin myself and had the BK made Alpha 300 prior. I've also helped many people with their Bubble Kings and am intimately familar with them. I've run almost every conceivable skimmer in the last 27 years. The BK's are are GREAT skimmers and hands down, one of my favorites but you need to pay close attention to the size rating. They are conservatively rated and have a very large neck diameter. If you don't have enough DOC's in your water or your tank is below their size rating, they will not perform consistently. They are load sensitive and must be sized properly. It's a skimmer that you absolutely don't want to oversize. If you size them properly, they are among the best when it comes to consistancy, lack of maintenance requirements, efficiency and skimmate production in experience.
As I said, I've run a lot of skimmers over the years on many different sized tanks. I've run becketts, Mezzei injected skimmers, venturi skimmers, down draft skimmers, Klase Skimmers, Reef Octopus, Euro Reef and many others. I always try to base my skimmer choices on tank and load size first then footprint. Different skimmers have different ways of generating foam and even when it comes to recirculating or needle wheel skimmers, they are not all created equal and in my opinion, you can't just go based on footprint. As such, I'd be reluctant to provide any advice based on footprint alone.
