which skimmer

[ric]

can anyone tell me which is the better type skimmer needle wheel ,ventura or down draft models. are there any pros and cons of the diffrent types thanks for any info on subject ric

 

[luke33]

They all work, the beckett's are generally high wattage compared to NW's. I prefer the recirc'd NW skimmers as they are very effiecient wattage wise and air wise. For instance a das ex2 skimmer will produce 1000lph air at 43watts. It will take much more for a beckett to get that kind of air.

 

[120gallons]

I vote for NW's like ASM.

 

[Maxx]

Thats a question thats pretty much up to individual taste....

Becketts do an impressive job of pulling stuff from the water, but they require a powerful pump to feed them, and they are touchy to dial in just right.

NW skimmers are pretty much plug and play.....but they do need to have the air inlet cleaned out and rinsed w/ fresh R/O water almost weekly.

Downdraft skimmers are an earlier version of the Beckett skimmer. Less touchy to dial in but still require a powerful feed pump.

There are pro's and con's to each. I've never used either a downdraft or a Beckett, so I cant give a fair unbiased answer to this question. I didnt like how much electricity my last tank was drawing, and how much heat the pumps added to the tanks temperature, requiring a chiller, which drew more elctricity. So I went with a simplified system this time around. As part of that, I'm using an H&S AF150-2001 recirculating skimmer.

Re-circ skimmers allow more contact time with the water, in theory allowing better removal of DOC's than regular NW skimmers. Mine is fed directly from the drains of the display which cuts down on the power used to run my tank and the heat added to it.

HTH,

Nick

 

[ReefferMan]

Re-circ is the way of the future. I use one and love it. deltec ap702