Clownlover,
This is a discussion forum and your not the only one thinking of doing this. In fact we just had a discussion about doing this three weeks ago.
http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/general-discussion/27664-next-years-tank.html
The point is not moot because its not only about what you do. When you post on this forum others will read the thread and hopefully learn from it also. If your going to post for help, please be willing to help others. Instead of lfsmarineguy saying just get a book, or you saying I'm reading it, it would be extremely helpful if one of you could just give a small few sentence overview on something that is being advocated. I'm not even sure what ideas lfsmarineguy has helped you with since he's only referenced a book.
I know your new here and you might not have seen my postings before but I'm not going to argue over some skimmer debate, I don't have the time to. I don't care what filtration you use, if you don't want to use a skimmer, please shout it from the rooftops and I won't pay attention.
But I am interested in understanding how to handle the situation if someone does use a skimmer, such as LeslieS or myself. I also think the majority of people don't want to see bubbles in the tank and no, in this situation depending on the skimmer that is used, bubble baffles might not be sufficient. But also if you do something like the zonal approach, how much water volume space do you have to reserve for filtration. For me this is most important because if I go with a 4' tank and have to use 3' of it for filtration then I'm not going to want to do that.
Thanks