skimmer choice for 180 gallon
 

I am in the process of planning a 180 gallon sps dominant heavily stocked tank, with an attached 80 gallon frag tank. Which model BK would you recommend.
Deluxe 200? Supermarin 200?, Double cone 200? or other?

When you say heavily stocked, what is your planned fish load? I hear the term heavy load all the time but often people don’t realize that a truly heavy load by industry standards is upwards of 1/2” of fish per display gallon. Coral do little if anything to increase load so that would be the least of my concerns in recommending a skimmer.

My personal first choice (depending on the actual fish load) would be the Deluxe 200. I love the Deluxe. It’s build like a tank and like the Supermarin, it’s made of much heavier material than the Double Cone. The SM and Deluxe are our flag ship skimmers. The Deluxe is a bit more flexible in terms of load compared to the SM and will handle pretty much anything you throw at it. It’s about the most flexible when it comes to different load ranges and is VERY under rated.

That said, any that you mentioned above would be good choices though the SM200 would need the heaviest load of all of them and is better suited for wet skimming where as the Deluxe or Double Cone will skim dry as well as they will skim wet. My biggest concern would be what you deem as a heavy load. Knowing that would help me better when it comes to recommending the skimmer but the Deluxe 200 would most certainly fit the bill.

I'm not sure my stocking will be quite that heavy, but it may get close over the next 18 months or so. Sounds like the Deluxe or the Double Cone is the way to go.

That would be my suggestion. You can’t go wrong with either.