[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by sphelps

Drilling the expensive acrylic body can often result in fracture and voided warranty.

I know, most people would rather do their own dentistry than drill into a new protein skimmer

I wouldn't personally ever setup a skimmer to be fed by a siphon over a pump, in theory the perfect siphon will deliver consistent flow but in practice it's not the case and if flow is suddenly increased a big mess will exist.

Never say never. Technology and methodology is always adapting and evolving. If a sudden increase or decrease of flow ever occurred I would spin it as "intermittent wet skimmate to remove strongly hydrophilic proteins"

Moving a lot of flow through the sump has many benefits

Such as...

It's important to remember it's not a simple science and there are many ways to skin a cat. I won't go into too much of my reasoning again but I will say real experience and evidence trumps theory.

You haven't gone into any details other than "everyone else is doing it", and from my experience they are not all doing it. In my travels I see 3-5x the volume of the tank to be the common practice for return pumps. Apart from theory, in practice I use 3-5x the volume with a total tank flow rate of about 20x the total volume.

Dr. Stephen Spotte said it best "The successful maintenance of a seawater aquarium is mostly witchcraft mixed with a little science. In this book I have attempted to describe the science, but with the realization that understanding the witchcraft might be more useful."

Unless you care to share some of your witchcraft, we are stuck with my science

I believe that the best resource for this can be found in the RC site where every month some of the worlds best tanks are showcased and described.

I contribute regularly to RC threads, but I have never bothered to read more than one or two TOTM profiles. I don't find them to be completely honest or particularly reflective.

There you will find almost all tanks showcased run return flows around 5-10x display volume, if not more. For me it's hard to argue with success, they got to be doing something right.

There is no cause and effect of what you are claiming. If sure most of the tanks were glass rather than acrylic and used metallic pumps rather than magnet coupled ones, but this doesn't offer empirical evidence of anything. If you look at the TOTM historically you will see an evolution of technology and methodology. To deny this is to deny progress, and that is what I see with your opinion.

You're obviously a smart guy and you have experience in aquarium design but we definitely have some differences in opinion and what we consider simple, which of course is a good thing

I'm more experienced than smart, but I'm getting there. I have the advantage of 30 years of mistakes to learn from. I'm done making most of them

I also noticed you're new to this site (WELCOME BTW ), perhaps you could provide a link to your tank(s) or some of the work you've done. I always like to see the work of others who offer different approaches.

I'm active on a few sites, so I decided to divert some of my time over to this forum. This forum seems more active than the other Canadian site I belong to that I won't mention

I don't expect anyone to do a 180 and follow my advice, and what I said last year was as different from today as today's will be from next year's. I participate on these forums to learn and share what I have learned. I get inspiration from others and new insight into old questions.

I didn't come here to pick a fight, but it looks like I landed in the middle of one. Don't take anything I have said personally. It's all in good fun.