What skimmer?

Tank is a 220 I have the marineland 300 and want a bigger one. I have I figure 180 gallons of water after live rock and a pretty heavy bio load. I dont want to exceed 500 if possible. Any recomindations.

 

I have read a lot of rave reviews on the octopus extremes, a 250 should do you fine. I just ordered an octopus pro 300, a bit more expensive but I think the askol pump is going to be a bit better than the sicce's. The octopus hurricones look really promising, but 620$ is what you are looking at there. Lastly if you dont want any of those I would say an ASM g4x would make you quite happy. I have not personally used any of these, I have just done a lot of reading because I was looking to upgrade. The problem with the octopus extremes is they are selling like hotcakes and back ordered everywhere.... That's the other reason I went with the pro, although the price is double for the same ratings, the extremes are hard to come by.

 

Their are many different types of skimmer, that come with their own set of pros and cons. The best advice to you is to purchase a skimmer that is rated for more than the size of your tank. The skimmer description stating the size of the tank it can handle is a recommendation at best. The companies do not take into account the bioload or other factors in establishing their rating of their skimmers. Bigger is better for the most part!

Unless you are going with a downdraft style skimmer which is a very powerful style of skimmer that uses a larger pump size to produce alot of water force, the taller the neck of the skimmer the better. This combined with a reduced pump size to decrease the quickness of the water through the unit will provide an optimal level of microbubbles and time in the unit so that adsorption can carry out and your skimmer can remove as many contaminants before being placed back into your tank!

 

I run one of these on a 265g and love what it has done for the water clarity.