Protein Skimmer?

[d.french]

my octopus exteme skimmer way outperforms a coralife, have had both skimmer and me myself and other have flooded there house because of coralife. If price is a issue i would watch for good sale in reef central club forum or on craigslist before i buy a coralife. My buddies coralife hardly spits out anything but that berlin i had filled up cup once a week or 9 days dark green not that week coffee look. Asm aren't bad but you have to mod them to get them to do something.

[fatman]

Adjustments very in there simplicity. The Octopus is easier to dial in than the coralife. But bang for your buck is still with the Coralife. Well adjusted it will do as well or nearly as well as an Octopus needle wheel or Turboflotor of the same design capacity. It can be expected for some advantage in performance be on the side of a pump with larger flow. Coralife has the smallest flowing pump. Regardless, I would rather own and use two Coralifes than a single Octopus and that is about the price difference involved. Two Coralifes will obviously run circles around the single Octopus with out any chance of any valid argument in disagreement being possible. And the advantages of that are great, as are the advantages of redundancy. The only real advantage to an Octopus is the better materials of construction and easier operator adjustments. ASM still uses cheap extruded plastic for construction same as Coralife and Turboflotor. There are many regulars on this site who will swear by their Coralifes. I personally use dual Turboflotors as I buy them in quantity at a discount, and I like their size and the pumps they come with. I do not like the cheap plastic they are made of though. I like the cell cast plastic of an Octopus needlewheel, but that is all, as they are over priced just like the Turboflotor and their pump should be up graded.

[McCrary]

Fatman- I don't think the Coralife is in the same ballpark as some of the skimmers coming out recently. The coralife 220 is $215 and the Octopus 200 is $200, so both are priced close to each other, but the Octopus would kill the coralife in terms of skimmate production. Not to mention if you went to the MSX-200 you would only be shelling out another $100 and you would have a skimmer that just might take out more gunk than the Octopus and the coralife combined. Plus, the Octopus is made out of cell cast acrylic, which is what my $1,000 H&S is made of (although the quality is obviously different), and it is the same size (24" tall with a 8" wide reaction chamber). The idea that two coralife skimmers are going to beat a single Octopus might be true, but you are totally ignoring skimmer subtleties like dwell times which determines the extent to which some larger molecules are broken down. Pump flow does have to do with how well a skimmer performs, but a good measure of the skimmer isn't necessarily all in flow, it has a lot to do with air intake. But like I said, skimmers can perform very differently just because of slight differences in design and small subtleties that most won't even notice.

[d.french]

ive only seen store owners recommend a coralife talk to luke33 on reef central he will point you in right direction and luke plus hundreds of other will not recommend a coralife. There are alot of reefers here in st. louis area and alot of us use either ATI skimmers, euro reef, and alot use octopus skimmers, some use ASM but they use mesh mod to get more out of them.

[McCrary]

sjm817 (Team RC) is another good guy to talk to, they keep more up to date on the skimmer threads than I do and would definitely be able to point you in the right direction.

[d.french]

euro reef or deltec are over priced skimmers, octopus and msx skimmers are the best skimmer for the price right now alot of online stores sell alot of them, octopus nw 200 only 200 bucks, thats not bad at all. But you get what you pay for its your tank.

[d.french]

http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merch...e=Superskimmer

or

http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=CV-OCT-NW-200&Category_Code=Octopus



not much price difference just difference in quality

[McCrary]

Yea, I used different sites, but the prices are very similar to one another. The MSX seems to be the hot skimmer right now, just like the BubbleMaster was like 6 months ago. The one nice thing about buying a skimmer from Deltec, H&S or BK is that you don't have to fiddle with them, or mod them and they produce skimmate for a long time with consistency. But you do pay for the convenience and the name of those companies.

[d.french]

premium aquatics is close so they have fast shipping for me, thereefstop.com i know that guy who runs that website give discounts for being member of local rc club so i only order from them. there are many skimmers out there to choose from, i've seen people in our club and other forums ordering those other skimmers reeflo brand also. they look like nice skimmer but i can't let somebody recommend a coralife to someone and why would someone want 2 skimmers when you can have one that is similar price and performs very well, but like you said it depends on many different things like setup, water depth, air intake, lots of mods can be done to any skimmer to make it kick @ss. Mesh mod impellar drill bigger hole for more air flow in intake.

[McCrary]

The coralife is a viable option for a HOB skimmer (overflow issues aside), but it just isn't going to perform on the same level as larger in-sump skimmers. That isn't to say its a bad skimmer, but you have to look at things in perspective, in-sump skimmers will trump HOB skimmers of the same price simply because of the size and design differences.