Can you have "too big" of a skimmer?

[darrinsimon]

I have a 90g FOWLR with a very light bio load right now. My P.O.S. H.O.B. typhoon skimmer broke and I can't get it touch with them for the part. I got the okay from the wife to go with a real skimmer and a sump. I will be adding fish once the new house is finished and the tank moved there and re-established. (it's currently up and running in a temporary place)
I am looking at the MSX 200, but the MSX160 should handle it fine. It's only 10 bucks difference, would the 200 be overkill? Can you have too big of a skimmer? (not going hog wild anyway)
Also any ideas on a sump, I have looked at so many I don't know where to start. I would have to go with a overflow box and a return pump. How fast do those overflows drain? I have to figure out head pressure for the return pump, there is so much involved it's intimidating to me.

 

[king_neptune]

in a word no

 

[flower]

+1
However...skimmers pull out the good with the bad...if you have corals: they remove the food out of the water as well.

 

[king_neptune]

and consider that you may be unhappy with the extra flow it generates. ex:
you have water going into a fuge, and attached with that fuge is a pump that sucks out 600gph..sends it to the skimmer, then pumps it back into the fuge. add that to the water flow of your drain lines, and you got a massive amount of turnover in the fuge.
that defeats the purpose of a fuge. the idea is to have water sit aand stew in the fuge. not have it racing through it.
i have a skimmer rated for 3x the size of my tank, but i dont intend on ever turning it on unlesss i need to. otherwise if water params are good, then why mess with it.

 

[scsinet]

You can also use a recirculating skimmer. That way you can vary the flow rate through the skimmer independent of the skimming operation. Best of both worlds IMO.

 

[darrinsimon]

Thanks guys. I don't have a fuge nor any corals, fish only.
I don't quite grasp the concept of a recirc skimmer. Does that mean it will be external and not in the sump? I tried to look it up and it said something about a separate pump to feed it water.

 

[scsinet]

A traditional skimmer uses a pump to take water from your sump/tank/whatever, induce fine bubbles, and flow that water through the skimmer's body.
A recirculating skimmer uses a dedicated pump that pulls water from the skimmer's chamber, introduces fine bubbles, and delivers it back into the chamber, forming a closed loop of sorts within the skimmer body to produce the bubbles/foam. Then, a separate feed pump pushes dirty water into the unit, and clean water flows out through a discharge pipe.
The advantage is that you can have more control over the flow through your skimmer. In the first design, cutting the water flow down through the skimmer also reduces the foam production, since the same pump does both jobs. In a recirculator, the flow rate can be varied from 0 to [whatever it's rated for] while foam production remains the same. This allows you to slow the flow down and aggressively skim water at a low rate, or turn the flow up and skim a greater water flow more quickly (but less thoroughly). Since nearly all skimmers use the flow through the system as a means of determining the height of the water in the skimmer, it also allows you to adjust the water height in the skimmer independent of the skimming.
It's really a moot discussion anyway, I only mentioned it for the academic sense... you really can't have too big of a skimmer. However, recirculating skimmers are IMO best for systems where you oversize the skimmer for a very heavy bioload, because you can run the flow slower and achieve much more aggressive skimming.

 

[darrinsimon]

Thanks SCSInet, makes more sense now.