beckett skimer

[ReDDeviLs]

how do we know if our beckett skimmer can serve our tank well? as i understand that we cannot judge it by seeing the skimate produced.

[LaW]

good skimmer but consume alot of electricity

[ReDDeviLs]

i dont want to know if its good anot,i want to know how good it is.

[LaW]

check out past treads on the product reviews.

i seen some reviews on beckett.

[riot]

Hi Reddevils,

The best/ easiest way of judging how well a skimmer is looking at the quality of the skimmate. You can tell about the quality of the skimmer by the density of the skimmate, how much is collected, etc. Of course, you could always test using a nitrate test kit and weigh out the drop/ increase in value, but thats more troublesome. You can also judge the ability of the skimmer by the bubble density in the main reaction body, and the head of foam generated.

How well the beckett works all depends on the tuning. A well tuned beckett would give you a good solid head of foam, comparable to the other top end skimmers around. However, you need to take into consideration other than the skimming ability- ease of mantenance, ease of tuning, electricity cost, etc. There are many reefers running becketts and doing very well. All three fellas recently posted on foreign websites use becketts- Deep Blue, AT, Danano (although not so nano anymore). However, there are also people who have switched out to alternative skimmers (Alfa, me etc) because we lack the skill to tune properly and it didnt work so well for us. (Alfa might beg to differ on this). It really boils down to individual preference.

Hope this helps.

[roidan]

how do we know if our beckett skimmer can serve our tank well? as i understand that we cannot judge it by seeing the skimate produced.

assuming what you want are very low nutrient levels, a skimmer is considered to serve you well if it removes organics fast enough to give you the low nutrient levels you want.

you are right. seeing skimmate does absolutely nothing much to tell if the skimmer is good enough or not.....a skimmer can skim out of the world gruesome stuff but there are more stuff out there in the water column that is rotting and is contributing to the high nutrient levels in your tank...similarly, a skimmate that is less gruesome may actually just mean that there are not much left in the water column to skim.

check your nitrates as riot said, if your nitrate values are dropping after the use of this skimmer. That means that the skimmer is pro-actively removing nasties before the rest of your system takes over in the ANN process.....if the nitrate values are holding, that means this skimmer is just about as good, or as lousy, as your previous skimmer.... if the nitrate values rise, this means you are worse off with the skimmer than before, ceteris paribus.

That said, whether you use a beckett or needlewheel or any forms of foam production method, if the skimmer is undersized, you are not going to do your reef any good. You can have a skimmer that is rated for gazillion litres of water...but if using the skimmer in your nano-tank still results in heavy nutrient problems, then obviously this skimmer is either not good enough (over-rated) for you or you have something seriously spewing nuclear waste in your system that even this gazillion-rated skimmer cannot handle.

solution: change skimmer