the only mystery that remains for tonight i is i would love to know how the fuck mobaxterm is coming up with 33 GB of RAM usage when htop is telling me its like ~2.4 GB
Figured out the answer.
ZFS needs approximately 1 gig of ram per 1 TB of storage in the pool, but the good news is it sounds like ZFS will yield that ram if the system needs it for something else down to 2 gigs.

