[b-diddy]

Originally Posted by tang daddy

As a once quite knowledgeable fellow said to me,

"You Get What You Pay For"

I laughed at him and said my budget is X and this is all I can spend, the coralife 250 is a great skimmer and pulls skimate like all the others so why would I spend 200 bucks more.

When I had the first flood in my room I spent half a day sopping up wet stinky carpets for 6 hrs and thought to myself buddy knew what he was talkin about!!

The second time it happened was the same scenario as the first time only this time I had spent even longer cleaning. Out of sheer frustration and back breaking work I swore to myself that I was going to get a more reliable skimmer.

The way I see it is this Coralife makes cheap skimmers!
They work well if you keep up with the maintanence and the water level in your tank does not fluctuate. Because alot of us run lights, flow, open tops etc. there is a considerable amount of water evaporation this fluctuation causes a cheap skimmer^ to overflow, even if you went with a more reliable skimmer it would do the same infact any skimmer with dropping water level will cause it to react this way.

Understanding the basics on how skimmers will act you may help yourself from flooding again.

Is there any way you could incorporate a sump into your system?

If so then you could run your skimmer inside the sump and hopefully never deal with this situation again.

If you cant do that then there are more reliable hang on skimmers that upon the collector cup filling it dumps it back into your tank.
I don't see this option being a good one because a concetrated amount of skimmate being poured into your tank can be very stressfull to your corals depending on size of your system and how much time it has to mix back before entering the system.

I would definately spend the extra money and get a in sump skimmer with a sump.

Or the last option is to not use a skimmer at all and just do larger water changes!

I hope this helps you in your quest to resolving your problem, coming back to a flood is always hard to deal with to boot the clean up sucks.

BEST POST OF THE WEEK! I can't tell you how helpful this one has been. I'm going to print it off - take a look at my options.. and look at my in sump possibilities. Question is though - how does a person put a sump onto a tank that doesn't have the space for one inside? I'm really new to this but like the idea of not having a hang on at the back that could potentially blow up anytime.

I've always believes in the "you get what you pay for" but didn't think I'd end up worse off for buying a cheap product. I figured it would just "suck" a little less. Instead it SUCKED A LOT MORE!