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Replacing ATi Bubble Master Skimmer. Bang for buck replacemnet advise requested

It seems like I've found my ATi BM stalled about half the time after a power failure. It's done a good job of skimming but a crappy job of being reliable. Based on your personal experience, are there any current "in sump" designs that stand out as fabulous bang for the buck replacement candidates that won't let me down in power failure and are very consistent in skimming regardless of minor sump level changes? Based on your experience would be great. Let's not build a Ferrari here, please, just a solid performer. 107 gallon system THANKS!
 
Why not replace the pump? The skimmer itself isn't the issue after all :)
 
Yes but why by the same thing if it has issues ;) There are plenty of pumps to choose from :D
 
To further things, don't replace the pump, replace the impeller, the mesh wheel impeller has a tendency to do that (although mine hasn't done that for a long time after sticking it in a new sump... the perfect water level maybe?)... you can get a needle wheel that supposedly doesn't chatter.
 
All very good thinking guys. Here's my observation. I have replaced the mesh wheel with a pin wheel with good results. No "power on" seizing since replacement. I've also seen that for short power outages, documented by the Apex controller, it nearly always fires back up. I had a power outage for a few minutes yesterday and it stalled. ATi owners have observed that when the pump (which is internal) is rotated 90 degrees, it rarely stalls under any circumstances. When I found it seized and stalled, I can usually overt taking the unit apart and cleaning each component by simply inverting the entire skimmer, plugging it back in and in most cases find the pump has restarted just fine. It sounds like a design flaw to me that the pump works better inverted than in OEM position. BTW, inverting the pump causes a conflict in the bottom plate of the skimmer and the pump housing. Not a good fix in my opinion. This brings me back to leaving it running, knowing that there's a good chance of it seizing if I have a power failure...........or..............finding a skimmer that does the somewhat simple job of separating organics from my sump water that is proven to run year after year regardless of power failures. I'd hope I wouldn't need to invest $1200 to achieve this goal.

Still looking for and appreciating your valuable input. :)
 
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