[Herminator]

wow. All I can say is Thank You!  I wasn't expecting such great suggestions and feedback.  Super excited to be a new member to AHA and a new homebrewer!  Thanks again for your responses.

[erockrph]

I have one glass carboy that came with my original homebrew kit, and a bunch of 1-gallon glass jugs, but I generally stick to plastic wherever I can. I have a couple of 3-gallon better bottles for things like mead that can use some extended aging, but everything else is is food-grade plastic buckets for me. I dry hop most of my beers, so I like the bigger opening. I brew smaller batches, so I use a lot of buckets in various sizes from here:

http://www.containerandpackaging.com/catalog/round-plastic-pails/62/#0,0&0&0&0&0&0&0&62&0&0&list&0&0,0

I use the 1 & 2-gallon buckets for starters and pilot batches and 3-4.5 gallon buckets for everything else.

As far as PBW goes, I use 1 tsp per gallon and it works great at that concentration.

[jlo]

If you need to see what's going on and are okay with using PBW properly you can't go wrong with Better Bottles. 

If you need to scrub something to know it's clean you are better off with glass. 

If you don't need to watch, I'm a big fan of buckets or conicals. 

I've used most of them, some bigger and some smaller and they all work.  To me it's more of a question of whether or not the activities involved in the proper care of the fermenter agree with you or not.

[positiverpr]

i did have one bb rupture. i dumped pbw into a water filled bb and forgot to mix it. noticed water running out of the bottom 1 day later. it was less than a year old and it was left sitting on concrete and it surprised me. there were still granules sitting on the bottom over the area where it cracked. now i mix well(swirled not stirred) and leave the bb sitting on a towel just in case.