To all Skimmer and Bubble King owners
 

Hey there. I'm just setting up a 6ft 210gal and have to ask. Is the Bubble King worth the money? I figure if I'm gonna spend the cash then protein skimming is a good place to spend it, but I've been getting a lot of mixed opinions on the BK(mainly based on price, bang for buck and a lot of new high tech and cone skimmers coming out recently). If the way to go is with the Bubble King then which model do you suggest for a moderately to heavy stocked system with a total volume of approx 300gal?

Advice from all appreciated
Thanks

Tagging along for ideas for my 150g

I have no idea if a BK is worth the money or not, but I have no regrets about buying mine

If you do get a BubbleKing though I wouldn't go any smaller then the supermarin 250 for a 300g system

You could get a bubble magus skimmer I think they are based on the bubble king skimmers but they are waaay cheaper. Theres a thread over on reef central and they are getting great reviews. I have a BM100+ (copy of bubbleking mini) and it works great :biggrin:

I have BK Mini 180. Awesome skimmer! It pulls about 2-3 cups of nasty skim mate per day on a overstocked approximetely 170G system. I've had it since Aug of last year and my tank has never looked better. I do not regret buying it and highly recommend them. Not the size your after but just commenting on the brand. Royal Exclusive has put out a new cone skimmer for Vertex that is supposedly gonna be kick ass. Will post results and pics in a few weeks when mine arrives. They are in demand and hard to get but if you give Dan a call at Aquatic Addictions he'll be able to help you out.

and then maybe the BK is in my house!

Josh at Marine Aquaria said that they have a cone skimmer on the way as well.

It's the same as asking "Do I need a Mercedes?". Nobody NEEDS a Mercedes for their existence and the Japanese brands have the Germans beat when it comes to bang for your buck in terms of features, but Mercs still sell really well. By the same token, why do certain women pay through the nose for a Louis Vuitton handbag when a burlap sack fulfills the same function just as well?

Like Mercedes and LV, BK is a luxury brand that many people get, in part at least, to show off a bit (and i mean this in the most positive sort of way :) ). There are many skimmers that probably do just as good a job pulling crap out of the water as BK, but they don't do it with the same Teutonic aesthetic and engineering snob appeal as BK: titanium screws, half cm thick CNC laser cut cell cast acrylic, flux capacitor etc.

You get BK because you want to, not because you need to.

P.S. I'm perfectly happy with my current skimmer but I'd get a BK if it wouldn't cost me my marriage ;)

you forgot the most important thing.. its sexy!

J/k aside, I have a mini180 and love it. Its totally silent and has worked flawlessly. Is it worth it? After spending as much as I did for one.. no way would I answer no:mrgreen:

How do you evaluate a skimmer anyway?
 

Skimmin and I have been talking about this subject pretty steadily for a week or so. He is unable to convince me that a Bubble King is a reasonable purchase and I am unable to convince him that it isn't. Here's my side of the argument:

The thing that I am stuck on is that I don't think these units are going to skim a whole lot better than something at a fraction of the price. There was an article published a while ago that supports this.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/1/aafeature2

The comparisons they did with 4 different skimmers based on different air injection styles showed that they all did about the same job with a protein analog in roughly the same amount of time. Unfortunately they didn't have one of the newer high end skimmer designs included in the testing so it doesn't seem to be a good supporting argument for this discussion. However if you take a good look at the article (and it's a beast I know) two things jump out at me that I think are very relevant.

In the controlled testing 3 of these older designs were able to achieve recovery rates greater than 90% when tuned properly. In fact it was the airstone model that managed the most consistently high recovery, which I am not surprised by at all.

Additionally when tested with real world tank water they all had similar results. The really interesting thing here is what the ceiling of those results are. The thing we want our skimmer to do for us is remove dissolved organics which we can measure as Total Organic Carbon. None of these skimmer was able to remove greater than 30% of the TOC measured. Because of the way a skimmer works a dissolved compound needs to have a structure that sticks to the bubbles or it won't be removed. Apparently 70%-80% of the dissolved organic compounds in your reef tank don't have the right structure and as such no skimmer can remove them.

So if I am able to get 100% recovery of available organics out of say a $500 ETSS Downdraft and realistically that is only 30% of the TOC in my tank anyway what am I paying 3x the price for exactly?

I can see three reasons to go spend a wack of dough on a fancy bit of aquarium gear.

1) It's going to work perform better than what I have. That doesn't seem to be possible in this case but I'd like to hear other people's points of view.

2) It's going to be easier to setup / maintain / tune. This is potentially important, it doesn't matter what a unit is capable of if it isn't setup right. However in the hands of an experienced reef keeper I don't think most skimmers are that big of a hassle and Skimmin is a pretty good DIY skimmer guy.

3) It's shiny. The BKs have a lot of shiny appeal to them.

So it seems to be that the only category BK (and other high price tag designs) wins in is the shiny factor. That's fine if that's the reason he wants to get it but he seems to think it's going to work better and I don't agree.

I have a 300 external and Love it. The ease of cleaning, the quality of construction and the materials used make it number 1 in my opinion. I have a 400G system so when you look at skimmer prices that handle 400G the BK really isn't that much higher in price. Look at H&S, deltec, Euroreef they are all around the same price as BK.