Here's version 2, trying to incorporate some of the great ideas
The intake zone is now a 4"x6" by 6" high little chamber with the skimmer right beside it. Is 6" too low? I just want to make sure the skimmer isn't sitting in too much turbulence. The skimmer compartment is 6"x13" and the skimmer is 5x5 (Tunze 9010) so there should be tons of room there.
The fuge/benthic zone stayed the same. I think I will use a little tupperware dish or something similar for the DSB.
The different spacing in the baffles made sense so the distance between the first 2 is 2" and it narrows to 1" for the upward side.
The return area got 2.5 more inches of length and 1 inch worth of height to take my return area capacity up to 9.3 gallons. Will having all my compartments at the same height be detrimental? In my original I had the compartment breaks at 10" on the intake side, dropping to 9" on the output side to encourage water to flow in the "proper" direction, I'm thinking this probably doesn't make a difference as the water goes in 1 end and out the other, it has to flow properly right??
Thanks for the suggestions and keep'em coming.