boB,
The thought of a sump scares the cr*p outta me with all those stories of animals finding their way into the plumbing and other plumbing failures producing floods
A few years back we had a HOT Precision Marine skimmer on our 75g that was more trouble than it was worth. The thing overflowed several times, but it did skim well
I'm even afraid of Fluvals and the like because of overflow problems, so now everything is in the tank and no water is lost due to malfunctioning equipment.
I find it more important to clean the foam media in the Hagen 802s than doing a water change, but I like the hands-on aspect of doing weekly maintenance and water changes. Makes me feel like I'm an integral part of that strange world inside the tanks for some strange reason.
I only started measuring alk and Ca when I noticed in our almost 1 year old 42g that I wasn't getting very good coraline growth. Wasn't dripping kalk like I used to so I had to resort to measuring and adjusting stuff. Both alk and Ca were low in all tanks, even the 28g seahorse tank which has no corals, only LR, sandbed and macroalgae.
Yes, it's heartening to me too to know there are others who aren't high tech with their reefs and still manage to have nice looking tanks. How about some pics of yours, boB?