I think the beauty of this hobby is that a person can be successful (with work and research) in any given "morph" they decide they are comfortable with. Comfort equating to money and time.
And I don't know if I am like others but have found that once you get into multiple tanks then you can have more than one type of system and that is probably what I enjoy the most.
The big tank is as Deeeelux as I could afford, toys galore and all about SPS. I travel quite a bit for work and since that is where most of the $$$$$ goes It just made sense to me to try and protect it. Not doing so equates, in my mind at least, to buying a brand new car and never doing an oil change.
The mandarin cube is lower scale because that is what I set out to create from the beginning. Tank, open sump, no skimmer, no dosing, softies & LPS etc.
QT is simple and as basic as can be and the frag tank is plumbed into the big SPS so piggy-backs off that.
The hubby is the "design-build" department and he simply needs to over build, to consider it properly built, so I sometimes have a hard time keeping things simple. There are a few "rules" however i won't compromise on. These are just my personal rules and help me sleep at night &/or concentrate when at work or out of town.
It will be Bean Animal
It will have an internal C2C
It will be B.B.
No equipment purchased can start with HOB
But that's just me