Just wanted to comment on finicky skimmers, micro bubbles and floods.
1. For hang-on skimmers, you unfortunately have a small risk here, but mitigate it by using high quality designs like Remoras and this should not be a problem. For in-sump skimmers, proper sump design will eliminate micro bubbles. You need to allow enough space for the bubbles to rise and pop, baffles help as well.
2. For floods because of a skimmer overflowing, just drill the collection cup high up and emptly it into a 5g bucket for it to overflow into.
3. Some skimmers do require lots of tuning for initial setup. But I think this setup time is less than the time required to maintain a non-skimmer setup. If you have to keep tuning your skimmer, then something keeps changing in your reef, likely inconsistant water level, and dosing your tank with different products.
Bev's skimmerless tanks work for her and that is great. She does have very nice tanks, they are beautiful and really quiet which is nice.
But she has trade-offs too. She keeps her bioload really low, does tons of tank maintenance and runs bare bottom.
So a reefer has to figure out if they are willing to make this trade-off or not. I know I am not, I like high bioloads and the look of a sand bottom and try to keep maintenance to a minimum. For the bulk of reefers, and especially those just getting into the hobby I think a skimmer is essential.
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