Skimmer question

[AGM1]

Hi,

I have a tank that im looking to convert to saltwater. I want to put a sump in the stand. The stand is only about 26-28 inches tall from the inside. The itself is about 100 gallons, and already has an integrated sump, which i was going to devote purely to mechanical filtration, with the new sump containg the skimmer and refugium. What kind of skimmer should I get? I was looking at an ASM G-3 or G-2( rated at 200), but they are too tall. That was going with the theory of a lower quality but overpowered skimmer. Should i go with a smaller euroreef or deltec rated at 100 gallons? Which theory is better? Any help would be great. thanks

[azcummins]

I have a similar stand as yours in terms of height and I recommend either a Euro-Reef or a Vertex. Both are very reliable, easy to find (new or used) and worked great for me. Specifically, the E-R RS 135 would be a notch above what you might need. I run a Vertex IN-100 on my tank as I'm not overly stocked or an SPS freak.

ASM makes a good product from what I've read, but what I don't like about them is how the skimmer returns the "clean" water to the tank - via an overflow tube where the water comes up the tube, spills over the top of the tube, then falls back down into the sump.

I don't like this design for 2 reasons:

1. Unless you can position your skimmer in the middle of your sump, then the water that overflows out the pipe could overflow over the side of your sump. I had this happen to me once when I was adjusting the overflow pipe. I grabbed the pipe to push it down, which caused the water coming out of the pipe to dump over the side of my sump. Plus if someone is watching your tank while you are out of town isn't an experienced reef keeper, then might not know to watch for this issue.

I like the skimmers that have the output pipe return the water under the water level w/out having to "spill" over an output pipe. Its safer and quieter.

2. They are hard to adjust back to their old levels once you clean your skimmer cup. With these "overflow" type skimmers, to clean the skimmer cup, you would have to push the output pipe all the way down to make the air bubbles in the body of the skimmer drop far enough to remove the cup w/out overflowing your skimmer.

After you clean the cup and return it to the skimmer, you have to eyeball how high the output pipe was before you removed the cup and there is no reference mark to do this with.

With the EuroReef and Vertex skimmers, they have an adjustment pipe that has an arrow to reference. I put a black mark on the output pipe so that once I return the skimmer cup to the skimmer, I twist the output pipe such that the black mark lines up to the arrow and 99% of the time, that's enough flow through the skimmer. No guessing involved.