jhale said:
Cali I was wondering as a man who has used many skimmers how do you personally judge the way they work? Do you look at the tank and consider that, or do you judge the skimmer by what it produces. What are your skimmer favorite features over the years? If you could combine the best features all in one skimmer what would they be. and last, has the skimmer been made that you feel could not be improved upon?
How good a skimmer work is not directly related to how the tank it support looks, some of the crappy tanks I have seen have great equipment.
My opinion of a good skimmer is based on (in order of importance to me):
1. Performance - it must be able to pull lots of crap out of water, fast. I have not seen any skimmer beat a Beckett skimmer in this area and Barr is by far the best performing skimmer I have used.
2. Construction - it must be built to withstand some abuse. Skimmer is the one piece of equipment in our system that gets the most amount of fiddling, cleaning, and moving around, good skimming skimmer that leaks or cracks easily is garbage (MRC comes to mind).
3. Power consumption - with the current price per KW and surcharge, this is moving up the list for me. My kick ass Barr will be replaced soon because the pump that is driving it uses 400+Watts.
4. Adjustment - I think the perfect skimmer should be easy to adjust and maintain that adjustment. So far I have not seen a perfect skimmer.
5. Noise level - Good needle wheel skimmer usually don't have a problem in this area, Beckett is about as loud as you can get when you include the pump noise, I would never recommend installation in a living area.
I think the Deltecs are pretty good and have a lot of the qualities I am looking for in a skimmer. The only thing I don't like about them is the price DELTEC charges for plastic.. I think they made their killing on the skimmers already and now should produce a lower priced line to cater the majority. The reason Doug gives for the $500 Eheim is BS, I am looking at a standard 1260 and a 1260 from my 701, I don't see the $375 premium they charge and I sure don't believe a plastic needle wheel is $375.
Good customer service is important, but not to everyone. Sometime they do more damage than good, I get really mad when they try to over sale them selfs by bashing other skimmers. I just don't see a need for that kind of "advertising" and would not want to buy a product from individuals that resort to those tactics.
