OP
OP
Dary421
Aquarium Advice Addict
Just a little observation/ update here regarding protein skimmers,....when I first ran my old 75 gallon tank I used a hob eshopps skimmer I believe rated for something like 150 gal (?) ,..and with all due respect for any and all opinions here,...that skimmer really rocked,...it removed the nastiest crud you'd ever wanted or didn't want to see coming from you're tank,....but once I got my sump installed etc I wanted to get a in sump model that would be big enough for any tank up grade I had coming......so being kinda a pirate I took a gamble I bought a redsea 1800 skimmer , (I know Greg also was running this same skimmer) however ,even after upgrading my tank to my new 135 and after eight or nine months of toying with this monster , I could never ever dial it in correctly,.. First it has a built in pump for the air intake but requires an additional pump for the intake and out flow of water,..originally I ran it off of my sump's return pump but that never seemed to work correctly and made for a lot of overflow problems, so I bought "the" redsea pump made for that skimmer,..( the first one did not work and was returned for another one ) that proved to be a lot better but the pump itself was really touchy,once you turned it off and tried to restart it ,it sometimes refused to restart so you'd have to fish the pump outa the sump and bang it around until it would restart.
If that wasn't bad enough ,.. It's got a separate water intake lever and separate air intake knob,...God knows that I spent many an hour trying to balance things out so it'd work properly,...about the best I could ever accomplish was to get the neck and the top of the lid to load up with the sludge but never taking the heavy duty sludge into the collection cup,..the collection cup always had water in it that smelled like old seawater but nothing really that would make you wanna heave.
That skimmer ( for me ) was scary in that you always feared something was going to happen when you were out,..flooding ,pump deciding to stop working etc.
So a few weeks ago mr .x ( Doug) in his thread was talking about how much he liked his newly acquired bubble magus skimmer,...so,.i decided to order myself a bubble magus 180 ex model,... Wow,..what a truly amazing difference !!! The bubble magus is so easy to setup ,no hidden features or tricky devices,...This thing will fill its collection cup with the raunchiest smelling crap weekly,... After experiencing what I had been seeing and smelling in the old red sea skimmer ,this sewer like ,vomit inducing smell coming out of the bubble magus collection cup smells like a "... Tiptoe thru the tulips". ( colonel potter,mash), to me.
Greg may have dialed his red sea in correctly and maybe for him and others maybe that skimmer rocks,..BUT ,..this is just MY experience regarding these two particular skimmers, just incase anyone is on the cusp about getting one.
If that wasn't bad enough ,.. It's got a separate water intake lever and separate air intake knob,...God knows that I spent many an hour trying to balance things out so it'd work properly,...about the best I could ever accomplish was to get the neck and the top of the lid to load up with the sludge but never taking the heavy duty sludge into the collection cup,..the collection cup always had water in it that smelled like old seawater but nothing really that would make you wanna heave.
That skimmer ( for me ) was scary in that you always feared something was going to happen when you were out,..flooding ,pump deciding to stop working etc.
So a few weeks ago mr .x ( Doug) in his thread was talking about how much he liked his newly acquired bubble magus skimmer,...so,.i decided to order myself a bubble magus 180 ex model,... Wow,..what a truly amazing difference !!! The bubble magus is so easy to setup ,no hidden features or tricky devices,...This thing will fill its collection cup with the raunchiest smelling crap weekly,... After experiencing what I had been seeing and smelling in the old red sea skimmer ,this sewer like ,vomit inducing smell coming out of the bubble magus collection cup smells like a "... Tiptoe thru the tulips". ( colonel potter,mash), to me.
Greg may have dialed his red sea in correctly and maybe for him and others maybe that skimmer rocks,..BUT ,..this is just MY experience regarding these two particular skimmers, just incase anyone is on the cusp about getting one.
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I have used a total of 5 skimmers and my eshopps is my favorite followed by the remora. Mine pulled awesome amounts of thick nasty skimmate, maybe I'm just lucky??
