Good idea Vic, we can make up skimmer testing service t-shirts and everything. Anthony can do the driving ;)

Ordered an In-180 this morning. For the price, how do you go wrong?

Well, okay then. This week is no good for me, too busy with work, but later sounds like a "fish-geek day-of-fun".

Irene: "Where you going?"

Anthony: "Out with the guys."

Irene: "Whatcha doing?"

Anthony: "Visiting reefers and testing their skimmers' performances."

K - picked up the 180 today...it's huge!! I'll post pics in a bit

Phoebe demo'ing the 120g

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/i...20gphoebe2.jpg

Skimmer in box (the 180)


http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/i...80/skimmer.jpg

Delilah checking it out

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/i...hskimmer-1.jpg

In sump

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/i...0/skimmer2.jpg

Just got my "IN-180" in the mail this morning and will now be late for work from setting it up!

Keri already posted some dry pictures so I won't bore you guys with 2 rounds of dry shots but I'll give you my initial impressions and maybe snap some shots tonight after it's been running for 7 or 8 hours.

My first thought is that it feels like a heavy duty, solid product. The pump is a resun King something or other rated at 1000gph with a power consumption of 70watts. I may bite the bullet and buy a killawatt meter to find out just how much it is actually consuming.

Setup was fairly easy, my only complaint with setup is that there is no picture. There was an instruction to "setup wedge pipe assembly" which consisted of maybe 4 or 5 pieces of PVC. Not a big deal as it took me all of 30 seconds to look up a picture online and go "aha". That was actually the longest part of the setup (turning on the computer). Otherwise I had it installed in about 15 minutes from opening the box and laying everything out.

Started up without any hickups, pump is DEAD silent. The loudest part of the whole assembly is the air intake which whistles a little. Bubbles are much smaller then they were in my tunze 9010 and it's obviously pulling a TON of air through it.

Still at work so no pics yet but I had a thought and did some investigating. With all the concern about the energy draw, I did some "comparative shopping" to find out what other pumps with similar flow rates are pulling.

Hydor Seltz l40 @740gph is drawing 55 watts
Sedra KSP 9000 @900gph is drawing 90 watts
Eheim 1262 @900gph is drawing 80 watts
Quiet one 4000 @1017gph is drawing 50 watts

So if we pop the Resun in there at 70 watts/1000gph it's smack in the middle for power consumption beating out the eheim and the sedra.

That puts it a little better into perspective as far as power consumption goes anyways

We're still running FW in ours trying to get rid of the dead corraline on the back but even with just that it's pulling out some snot, so far I'm impressed

Those figures are misleading with respect to skimmer performance. The wattage you quote is the rated power for pumping 100% water. You won't be pumping 100% water while using it on a needlewheel skimmer since air is being mixed in. This will necessarily reduce the power consumption since air is a lot easier to move than water. Further, the GPH quoted is also for pumping 100% water and not an air water mixture. As a result, the proper analysis to do for a pump's skimmer performance is Litres per Hour of AIR (LPH) versus wattage draw. The only way to do this is with a Dwyer air meter and a Kill-a-Watt device since different pumps respond differently to being converted into air/water mixing devices. You must remember we are essentially using these pumps for a purpose they were not originally designed to do.

For example, the Sedra 9000 on my WM RX200 pulls about 1,000 to 1,100 lph at 47 watts (not 90W) - these are actual observed measurements by myself and consistent with the manufacturer's ratings.

I expect the Resun pumps to pull less power than their "water" rating, but the question is how much and at what amount of air flow? What I am surprised about is that the distributor/marketer (Proline, I believe) didn't provide these numbers in their marketing materials as with most skimmers. Other than construction quality and low noise, BK marketing is all about very low wattage draw to very high air draw. It's not that hard to determine the numbers. This is why I am somewhat concerned about the actual performance of the Resun pumps if no one has bothered to publish them. So my offer to test a vertex skimmer (or any skimmer) in the Lower Mainland stands.

It's not like we don't have busy lives, but it sounds like we're off to test some skimmers this weekend:redface::lol: