I myself fall somewhere in between on this all. I have a tendency toward the gadgets, but mostly since I just like to build and play with them. Let me describe my methodology for my 55g reef, for a bit.
1. I have about 50-60 pounds of rock in the tank. About 25 was "live rock" from other hobbiest tanks, bought recycled. The rest was added to my tank during various phases over the last year, most of it up front.
2. Water flows out an in tank horizontal overflow and into the skimmer chamber of my sump where I am running a Coralife Super Skimmer 125. I believe the Coralife Super Skimmers are actually pretty decent for an inexpensive skimmer.
3. Water then flows into a refugium which grows a nice crop of Chaetomorpha. Water circulates back and forth from the refugium to both a PhosBan Reactor (where I run carbon & phosban) and a RDSB built into a 5g water cube.
4. Water is returned to the tank via a Mag 7 pump. It returns via a SCWD, which is about all the switching current I really think is neccasary. In the main tank, I have a pair of SEIO m620 for my primary water circulation.
5. Top-off is performed via an auto top-off system that I had a lot of fun soldering together with parts from Radio Shack.
It adds about 7 gallons of Kalkwasser to the system a week, which is doing an excellent job at keeping Calcium and Alkalinity roughly in the right place. I test those values, and more, every week or two and use Randy Holmes-Farley's 2 part DIY mix as required to get the values back to the right level.
6. I don't do water changes as often as I would like. I end up doing about 5 gallons every 2 weeks, which comes to about 15% a month. My goal would be closer to 5 gallons every week. However, I am not actually sure if that really matters all that terribly much.
7. I keep a standard garden-variety collection of hard and soft corals in the tank. Lighting is provided with a bank of five 54W T5HO bulbs (3 10k, 2 actinic). I keep some SPS corals (an acro, a monti cap, a couple monti digitata, some pavona) higher up on my rock struture. Down low are the majority of my more agressively growing soft corals such as xenia, GSP, kenya, etc. Also down there are a couple of brain corals and a pair of sun corals (one orange, one black). Also scattered around the tank are a variety of zoanthids, some ricordea, a mushroom or 2, etc.
8. Fish include the following: 2 ocellaris clownfish, 1 scopas tang, 1 rainford goby, 3 pj cardinals, and 1 yellowtail damsel. Other inverts include my collection of shrimp which all hang out together as if in a little gang (2 skunk cleaner, 4 peppermint), 2 starfish (1 brittle, 1 serpent), a couple emerald crabs, and a couple porcelein crabs. Of course, as well, I have a variety of snails and a handful of hermit crabs.
9. Lastly, we feed quite a bit. We will regularly add some dry foods during the day (which include cyclopeeze and other stuff). And then we have what I think of as the day and night frozen food mixes. The contents of those is a lot of what Eric lists in his reef tank food recipe. The night mix happens to be heavier on larger items, such as mysis, as it is used to target feed the sun corals and LPS corals. We feed the day mix regularly during the week, and the night mix as often as possible (hopefully a couple times a week).
10. Really lastly, I also keep some halimeda in the main tank, which I love. I think I would really enjoy doing more of a planted reef aquarium someday. I'll have to think about that...
I think this works pretty well. My estimation is that water quality seems to be pretty good in that phosphates and nitrates are very low, corals all show good growth, polyp extension, etc. And things SEEM to be pretty happy. We enjoy the tank and feel like we have created something more on the natural side of things. (Which may or may not be true)
I never would have thought that, that would happen........
