Filtration Question

my probably unpopular personal opinion:

Setup properly, a good DIY UGF still has a place in the hobby and it's probably for FOWLRs. By DIY UGF, I mean frequently drilled schedule 40 1" PVC w/ Ts & elbows covered in plastic screen, layered with 1" of coarse crushed coral or dolomite and 2" of coral sand. Add an Eheim and you're golden (as long as you never have to use any Cu in the tank - use of Cu pretty well limits you to a FO tank from that point forward unless you want to restore the UGF).

Live rock + a protein skimmer is one of the best filtration routes you can take and I can't think of any situation (with the exception of using a tank to raise fry, or any freshwater or brackish setup) where I would recomend against either items. A deep sand bed can also be VERY benificial, however, in some tanks it can be detrimental.

The difference beween a Wet/dry and a sump is that a Wet/dry is bassically a sump with about 80% of the water taken out so you can properly opperate the Wet/Dry. A sump is a container of water that is seperate of the main tank, however, it has water flowing between it and the main tank. For a sump, You do not need a drillled tank. There are other means of getting water from the main tank to the sump. You also need a Pump to move water between the two bodys of water (usually refferd to as a return pump) and the appropriate plumbing to get water into the sump and then back into the main tank.

If you plan on using live rock, a skimmer and powerheads and/or the return from a sump to give you enough water motion (approximately 10-20x turn over per hour), the Wet/Dry is unnesisary at best, which translates into wasted power and wasted space (which could be taken up by more water volume) in your sump.

To elaborate a little more here (eg. like wether or not you should use a deep sand bed, the water flow rate) I need some more info about what you plan to keep, how big a tank your planning and how much maintenence you would like to be doing.

For more on this, research "Berlin method" (I think that's a common name for LR/Skimmer combo). I have no personal skimmer exp. but have read that they can be "touchy" (getting decent foam etc.).

After seeing/smelling what a skimmer puls out of my clear looking water, I'd never run a tank without one.