So here's my first questions. My sisters boyfriend who sets up and maintains aquariums for a living says a regular tank and canister filter is best but the guy who got me into hobby and most people I see on here have similar setup to mine. Which is the better option and why? Also, is it safe to put tank in a basement? I could build larger setup, add dedicated breaker, and more easily mount lighting, plumbing, etc if so. Basement is all concrete, not finished, does not flood and is not extremely humid or smelly like some. TIA
Canister filters, which i usually think of mostly as mechanical filtration, need to be kept very clean for marine tanks. You can have media like carbon in them for chemical filtration, but this will need to be changed out every 2-3 weeks. Generally, there is not enough room in a canister to consider biological filtration. Flow through this type of system is also suspect and will likely become considerable less between maintenance.
If your sister's friend maintains them for others, perhaps it is just an easy way to go in and clean one piece of contained equipment for those clients that do none of their own maintenance. For one's own tank, it is easy to become lax in maintenance which would be a killer with this type of filtration. Maintenance on a canister filter is annoying. You have to have a way to cleanly remove it from the system without getting saltwater everywhere, then opening it is always a foul, smelly, dirty mess. Everything then must be cleaned completely, media replaced, then replumbed to the system. Even if you do all of this, you may find the maintenance needs to be done very frequently to keep the flow at a usable rate.
I would say if you run a canister filter, you still need some of the regular stuff as well like skimmer, reactors, refugium, etc. Not sure the canister does much more than those to be worth it really.