actually a well informed friend of mine, made a good point, that external pumps are designed to pump water that had already been filtered through sometype of filterfloss or filter sock and even additional filtration, possibly. So when you dont have prefilters filtering out larger particles of debris ect ect ect, they get sucked up and blended by the impellar, which logically would cause wear and tear on the motors resulting and breakage or leaky external pumps. But of course, theres always ways to do it so the pump doesnt work as hard or a brand that could possibly take the abuse (if i can call it that).
oh and BTW checkinhawk, the last pic looks uber lol. Awesome freakin build you got their.