Recirc vs stone vs 'all in one' skimmers?

[khaosinc]

I'm curious as to the opinions of various styles of skimmers. Mostly the recirculating skimmers (one pump for air/moving water and another for feed) VS the more modern all in one skimmers and then the good old school air driven ones. My opinion/thinking has been it made more sense to control the flow to/from the skimmer seperatly from the amount of air pumped in to the system. Currently I run a Euro reef 1000. Most modern skimmers seem to have the pump do both jobs (feeding the skimmer w/ air and water) where as with mine I control both by the return line from my tank and 5 ehiem 1262's. Has always seemed to me everything else being equal that it would make even more sense to just have pumps just for the Air at that point. I know as it is I can pull nearly 5 gallons of goo a week out of it. (granted I have a decent fish load and am a compulsive overfeeder

Can anyone make some sense of this for me?

[viggen]

I think it went airstone -----> venturi -----> needle/pin wheel -----> then RC's needle/pinwheel & somewhere along those lines I think around the time of venturi driven skimmers downdrafts were added.

Not exactly sure what the question is but from what info is out there RC skimmers are the best way to go due to being able to adjust the water input from the feed pump of from the overflow box. Increases dwell time & allos you to setup the skimmer more for your specific tank. ER/Reef dynamics I believe was the first to claim 1 to 1.5 turnover through the skimmer is ideal for skimming. The non RC'd skimmers many times flow a LOT more then that.

& on a side note.... how do you like the skimmer?? I am considering one except it's dart powered

[khaosinc]

other than being a power hog, I like it. Its just rare to see many of them in use. I'm toying with one that runs off the air compressor in my shop if I can figure out a decent air filtration system for it.