sump design attempt

[youareafever]

hello peeps,

this is some little design i put together. im starting my first saltwater tank and currently trying to plan everthing out. ive searched sumps and read a few books but still really dont know exactly how to design one. so i gave it a try and came up with these. there not good and i havent even really got measurements down yet but the reason why i did this is to see if i got a general idea of how sump design and what not. i got a 65 gallon tank, with very litte space bellow it. 40% of the water i presume would be around 26 gallons so i measure out a sizealbe tank that would fit below in the stand. i came up with the dimension of a 25" by 16.5" by 16" tank size. i left 10 inches of space in the stand to accomadate for pumps and future addissions of any sort. my sump design really i just threw together in about 30 mins so dont critisize me too much if i sketched something dumb please...but let me explain the picture a little better. the top view of the sump is what it would look from above, split into two diffrent chambers to accomadate for the slower flow rate the refugium as i read usually requires, that is accomplised by a ball valve of something placed in the peice of wall that seperates the refugium side by the other sump side. well acctually everything is pretty much self explanatory.
a couple of things though, the skimmer i was looking into was either the urchin pro or the EV-120, i like the urchin because they say its small and just a plug in and go thing, but i like the EV-120 because of that JG fitting that i can connect to a calcium reactor in the future, and it looks cooler. which do you think is good for a 65 gallon tank?
oh and the pump to run the entire system on, im confused. what should shoot for in terms of how many gph? is it ten times

 

[trigger11]

Not sure how much help I will be you may find some things useful.
From your drawing it looks like the protein skimmer is going to be in the last compartment before getting pumped back into the DT. Generally speaking you want to have the skimmer in the first compartment if you want to get full use from the refugium. If having the fug as a place for pods to propegate then they need to be after the skimmer. Otherwise the skimmer will kill them.
You will probably want to put the activated carbon in a filter sock just before it enters the sump/fuge. Should be easier to maintain that way.
I myself have moved away from the norm. What I did was take a 30 gallon tank and made it into a no frills sump/fuge. I put a deep sand bed in it, have the water coming in at one end and the pump at the other end. I do not have any separating baffles. I covered the pump around with a wire mess (gutter thing) so that the algae and stuff doesnt stick to it. Then put in a bunch of LR. I dont use a skimmer. Simple easy design. But then again I am not much of a DIY person. Anyways, just thought I would throw out a different alternative. As long as you have the separate place for the algae to grow you really cant go wrong.
For your question about the return pump.
You want to get a pump that is rated for the GPH of your overflow. So if the overflow and piping is 1" then that is 600GPH. You would want a pump that does 600GPH.