Compact Protein Skimmers

[Northstar24]

So, I am fairly certain that an upgrade to a Marineland Deep Dimension 300 is in the very near future for me. I've been working with my fish guy on the new filtration setup. The only piece that either of us are unsure on is a skimmer. The display tank itself will be a 300 gallon tank, and there will be another 50 or so gallons underneath in the sump and refugium.

The problem with the Marineland setup is that the stand is only 24 inches tall, which is going to severely limit my choice in skimmer. Right now, I'm leaning towards the Tunze 9430, but does anyone else know of a compact skimmer that would work for a tank of that size? Ideally, It would need to be less than 20 inches tall, and need to operate in sump with a depth of ~9 inches of water

 

[BL1]

the tunzes might end up being your only options, I'm not aware of too many skimmers for that size tank that are going to be under 20" height.

 

[Northstar24]

That's kind of what I figured, I just wanted to throw the question out there and see if anyone else had something I was overlooking. This is my one shot at an upgrade/redesign so I have to get it right :)

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Did you ever look at hobs? I believe my eshoops is 16 1/2. Just an idea, but i would believe you would need a dual setup

 

[FishyReef]

Are you locked in to having the sump under the stand instead of plumbing to another room or the basement? Not sure what your housing situation is.... I know my stand is also quite short and I can't remove the skimmer cup from the stand to clean it. I've made due with just angling it so I can get a rag in there to scrape out the gunk. I'm now considering putting a cabinet next to the tank to house a larger sump and skimmer, could this be an option for you? Another thing to consider would be to see if anyone in your area makes custom stands. We have a few people in our area who do and have done that to make a larger stand for the Marineland deep dimension 300s.

 

[Northstar24]

Plumbing and everything else needs to be contained on the stand, my wife doesn't want fish stuff all over the living room ( I don't blame her). The stand comes with the tank and I'm getting a close out price in it as the LfS wants it gone due to the space it takes up. I guess I could look into a custom stand, but that's adding a lot of extra cost that I'd like to avoid.

The tunze will work and has gotten good reviews, I just wanted to get opinions and see if I was overlooking a particular brand. I used my search fu and didn't find much myself

 

[BL1]

What's the exact height you've got to work with in that stand?

 

[Northstar24]

24 inches, ideally I need at least an inch or two so that the collection cup can be removed for maintenance, etc

 

[reefnoob]

I don't really know much about this, but I'm just throwing this out there, hopefully this can help. Would it be possible to have 2 smaller skimmers that can fit under your tank rather than 1 huge one?