To revisit the question on "why other brands aren't doing it if it works" is the battle of compromise. Some of those needlewheel designs are inherently very quiet, and a lot of people prioritize that. Approaching it from the other side the wine bottle shape uses less material and is therefore cheaper to manufacture, so are the pumps that typically get put in them. Tooling is expensive, and now they have several molds for that design so they can keep pumping them out with a color change, maybe a new valve, and call it "new and improved". Do they work? Yes, we've seen pictures of dark skimmate. Are they improved? That is a hard term to define. If you replaced that older version with its newer sibling, and got equally dark skimmate, is that really an improvement? Or did they manage to get another $300+ out of you for some new acrylic and maybe parts from another skimmer in their line?
Say you want to switch the pump out because you aren't getting the performance you were hoping for, maybe you feed heavy and run a heavy bioload and the existing pump chokes regularly or you seem to only get a light tea-colored skimmate when you want darker, or maybe you double your tank volume. Can you do that with the common design used by nearly all other manufacturers? Unlikely as they are typically some sort of proprietary design attached to bubble plates. Most folks are looking at a new skimmer at that point, for several hundred bucks at that point.
That is where Lifereef sets themselves apart. They are agnostic to pump so long as it meets certain GPH thresholds. AC or DC, whatever you want (although Jeff is adamant about AC pump designs, separate topic for another thread). They can be upgraded if you go the flange route to keep the skimmer on your system, and typically can handle any situation you put them in. They have one real adjustment which is water level in the body and once you get that level set you don't need to change it until you have a drastic change in your tank. No constant fiddling as you only have one thing to really fiddle with.
Lastly, let's look at cup design. I prioritize volume of skimmer cup and lack of maintenance in my equipment decisions. Some of these newer tapered cups give you such a small volume you are emptying it constantly. Most need to be removed to be drained (although drain ports are out there but typically are John Guest and you need to add additional valves or plumbing to use it). Most need to have the neck cleaned regularly to work well. I don't need to do any of that with my Lifereef. I use the drain port once every 7-10 days and it is empty. I maybe pull and clean the cup itself every 6 months. I once let it go nearly 8 months between neck cleanings and it still kept chugging along. That is what is important to me and the Lifereef skimmer does just that and more. Did I mention cleaning the body? Haven't done that since I put it in the tank, and it's still clean. I can disconnect the pump via union and don't need to pull the whole dang thing out just to clean a pump.
Those points might not matter to you, but they were what pushed me to a Lifereef and I won't go back. Yes it has a little more noise, but now I just run it at night when I'm not near the tank for 8 hours (I think we overskim our tanks anyway) and it just works.
. Anyway, both my needlewheel pumps for this skimmer had relatively short lives.
