Well i am planning on softies for the first while anyway, and i do have a spot where i can put power heads if need be. As for the return and check valves, I am not sure what i will do for sure i still have some options that I was thinking about. Such as out of those return holes have the pipe run up close to the top so that if there was a power out there would be much less water to back flow. I am planning on having LR go quite high up almost even breaking the surface in some spots and these spots are where i would have the returns come out. Either way I'm trying to keep my options open so that i can change stuff to be the best possible setup with the least possible risk in the end
Thank you very much for your opinion.