i agree both ways work it is all personal prefference, ichthys way works, as for my setup my skimmer is not in my sump as i dont have the room for it, so it is outside and a pumpflows out and back to the middle portion of my sump, and either way you can still have a failure and water all over the floor, not so long ago i had a hose clamp break and pumped about five gallons or so on the floor, had nothing to do with the skimmer. some pumps are pretty powerful and push water in a solid stream right out of your sump.