I have never really understood the price of skimmers in general. Just plastic, acrylic, and a pump, yet some run in the thousands. I would have to say there all over priced. It would be interesting to know if any are more effective (other than pump size) than the other. They all look the same to me. What’s the deal here?

You mean like this…

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

I think you’re forgetting to cost associated with R&D. Companies want to be compensated for that. Like in the automotive industry where the high-end cars get the new goodies first, then it trickles down into the family car, high-end skimmers tend to be more expensive and the knock-offs of the design tend to be cheaper (no R&D costs and usually cheaper material).

If we were talking about something complicated, I would agree with R&D costs being part of the overall price.. but we are talking about a cylinder and bubbles. How much R&D really needs to go into this? It is already proven that bubbles can only remove so much due to hydrophilic / hydrophobic properties. Mfgs can spend all the time and $ in the world for R&D, they are never going to get past the fact bubbles are only capable of attracting a certain amount of stuff to remove regardless of how many bubbles you make, all you can do is remove the stuff faster. I question why anyone would want to do that, remove food from the tank before everything had a chance to eat and way before the food spoils.

The body looks kind of very familiar, and I dont think that is a bad thing either.

http://bubble-magus.com/en/productShow.asp?id=1013

What makes a skimmer is the pump and volute, and I dont see many bad reports on Sedra or ASM to be honest.

I also think the expectations on what we pay are getting beyond crazy, if you cut the price so far, there will be no companie left in business. People easily forget these companies dont make the product for the love of it they do it to pay their mortgages, the same reason everyone has a job of any type. But cmon, how far do you want this economy to go before before too long we all will be working for bowls of rice

All we are doing is feeding the Cheap labor market and forgetting the long term effects on how that will effect our countries.

Grumpy ole me! I know!

I see about $50 worth of actual parts/material there, and most of that is the pump, and they charge $375, quite a large profit.. just curious what you would value the parts at? We can be 99.9% sure there was no R&D involved, so it is simply Mfg at that point.

Sorry, but when a $1 DIY MAME skimmer out of a soda bottle will perform the same as a $375 skimmer, it is hard to justify the cost, at least for me anyway. I think skimmers and LED fixtures are the 2 biggest scams when it comes to mark ups. Say it cost $50 to make that skimmer, to me, charging $100-$150 is a fair price and a very fair profit, charging $375 seems outragous and they certainly have priced themselves out of a lot of sales at that price point. Who would pay that price when you can get a similar performing skimmer with a different name (Bubble Magus NAC7) for close to $100 less.

Dont get me wrong, I agree with affordable and cost effective products but I also believe in the bigger picture of our economy, we have got to the point our expectations are now so high with quality but so low in what we should pay we have lost track of the effects this has on the long term survivability of the home grown companies trying to support us all and realistically help kick start our economies which includes giving us all jobs one way or another.

I know 99% of replies will disagree with me because we are so programmed to think about oursleves first these days, but if you worked for one of these companies that had to drive pricing down so low to compete and then the company went under and you lost your job, all of a sudden its not so fun is it ;( no longer is it 3% of the story.

Nuff said Happy days

http://tinyurl.com/3lnfevw

I will take science over company claims any day and the science that Advanced Aquarist has provided in the last couple years is pretty clear to me. Actually, so clear I have been running my tanks, a 75G and a 60G, without a skimmer for a couple years now (since their first article that Ryan linked to above) and not only did things not get worse once I removed them, they got better (coloring, growth) since I wasn’t removing so much food. 

I don’t know about 90%, I would actually say 100% since I have 2 successful reef tanks that have been skimmerless for years now, simply running algae scrubbers on both, no water changes on either in about a year, just dosing, and to top if off, I feed each tank about 10 cubes worth of food a day and still nitrates are 0 and phosphates always under .09 on a meter. I do toss in a mesh bag of Rox carbon in the sump for a weekend once a month since it can be much more helpful than a skimmer. There are hundreds, if not thousands of very nice reef tanks around the world that don’t run a skimmer. For me, anything a skimmer was pulling out wasn’t needed to be pulled out since things are doing better without one in my situation.

Do you have some scientific articles showing how they really benefit a reef tank, short of what a $5 pump and airstone could do (aeration)? I think skimmers will help a FO/FOWLR tank quite a bit, but on a reef tank within my budget (under 200G), I will never use one again.

I wasn’t really referring to the comparison conclusions (although they speak for themselves when trying to compare a $200 skimmer to a $2000 skimmer), more the skimmate analysis article showing what is actually taken out of the water. To me, the most credible posts here are from Ryan and Joe, they provided links to science. I don’t see any links from anyone else that counters anything stated in those articles.

People need to ask themselves, 1. What does a skimmer provide for you, and 2. Are there other, better, cheaper methods to achieve the same goal. 

I don’t agree at all that a skimmer helps maintain any type of “stability” within a reef tank. How is a skimmer going to help if you have a giant fish die in the tank that you can’t get to? A skimmer isn’t going to remove ammonia, a scrubber will. 

It is very hard to make an algae scrubber “crash” and they are very efficient at removing bad stuff from the water, while leaving good stuff behind to feed corals. Best part, it cost maybe $20 to make a good algae scrubber.

The way I see it, it comes down to 2 methods to run a tank. The “God” method where your constantly tweaking/controlling every little parameter, or there is the “natural” way. I did the “god” method for 10 years, it got to be too much. Too much time and too much money. I decided to take the natural approach a couple years ago and have been so much happier and so have my tanks (in terms of health and stability).

Your absolutely right, there are more costs involved than just materials. That being said, I guess the biggest problem I have is that every person that puts their hand on the product, from manufacturing to selling to the customer seems to think each person needs to make 100% profit before moving it down the supply chain. It is just greed. Even with your numbers, say $80 landed, no more than $100 to sit on the shelves of a store. Store probably pays $200-$250 for the skimmer and are required to resell it at MSRP, which the company puts at $375 (even Bubble Magus does this).

There is just way to big of a gap for my liking. I am all for people making profit and running a successful business, I just don’t like seeing businesses try and make so much profit of every single item. Nothing says they can’t try, but they can’t complain when people chose the $100 cheaper “made in china” version of the same product. China works on volume and makes pennies in profit, US makes hundreds in profit per item, I think there has to be a middleground that is fair for all.

I understand your points which have validity, but “successful tank” is relative. Define what is SUCCESSFUL. Not trying to ruffle your feathers, but your statements are painted with such a large broad brush stroke. Reef Labs pointed this out.

I have had tanks which measured 0 ppm Nitrates and other great parameters, but the tank looked dull. See another relative term. Your definition of successful might vary from my definition. 

I think many people’s success is define on those who have “neon colors”, and/or have high growth rates of colonies, well at least for me. And oddly, the majority of those people who show case their tank, has a protein skimmer! Some even use ZeoVit, which is far more controversial than a silly protein skimmer!! But I do believe their is more than one way to skin a cat. *Better ways to skin a cat. 

And as far as the science, foam fractioning has existed long before aquariums. You can do plenty of research on it. And if you find evidence is not substantial, you probably should fund Advanced Aquarist to prove your Theory. I’d be interested as many others in the aquarium hobby/industry/public aquariums.