I have a few questins related to this article. I am currently planning to upgrade to a 125 or 150 gallon display tank (or just dreaming?).
You use air to run the lift tubes. Would you consider power heads or the newer style circulation pumps suitable alternatives?
I assume that the relative lack of DOC in your tank also eliminates or greatly reduces "surface scum"? Or, is this handled by the water change overflow, or a combination?
What are the essential attributes of your setup that achieve the desired water "mixing" without being too much flow for the fish? If you turned the water over 5x/hour, what do you think would change? What if you reduced the lift tube count by 50%? I suppose I am looking for how I might tune/adapt this to other situations, or "rules of thumb."
I must run filtration under the tank. How loud is the water pump? Always a subjective question, but I currently enjoy the complete lack of detectable noise from an Eheim canister. The small air pump, an airstone bar in the tank and the resulting popping bubbles are much louder in the room, and occasionally my wife complains. I wonder how a 1000 gph pump would compare.
Have you ever explored the advertised denitrification properties of Seachem Matrix?