Hydor slim skimmer and tunze 9004
 

Looking to get back into the saltwater world and was curious if anyone has had any experience with either of the 2 skimmers. Planning on having a 30 gal cube reef tank (20x18x20 - medium load). Looking for something that will be as quiet and compact as possible (in the living room) also something that won;t have alot of micro bubbles go back into the tank.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice.

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but just wanted to add one more option for you. The CAD Lights PLS 50, is a nano sized skimmer with a 50G capacity. Super quiet and produces a good amount of skimmate.

I've heard good things about the slim skim and the one I saw running was near silent.

Unless you're a forum sponsor i would personally shy away from hijacky moves like this. not sure how anyone else feels about that. The question was in regards to 2 options
Try PM'ing :)

I've used both those skimmers in the past. Performance wise I'd recommend the tunze over the hydor. But the hydor was quiet and looked very nice with little micro bubbles. It also was a good skimmer.

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I replaced the Red Sea Max 130D stock skimmer with the Hydor Slim Skim Nano skimmer as the stock skimmer sounded like a muscle car idling in my living room.

Performance wise I don't see the Hydor pulling much more than slightly darker than tea colored water from the tank but it is dead silent, built very well and does produce very fine microbubbles with zero entering back into the tank. The skimmer also has a tiny footprint of 3 x 3" so you can fit it into tight spaces easily.

Once I increase the bioload of the tank I'll have a better idea of what it can really do but I would think that the 35 gallon rating on this thing is pretty much all it could handle. The regular sized model I believe is good for a ~50 gallon tank but the collection cups on these guys are pretty small and need to be emptied often.