About to jump in

[StevenSeas]

I have recently moved into a bigger house, yay!!! So I now have room for a tank. I am thinking of a 150 Gallon reef tank with a refuge sump and a protein skimmer. Here alas some questions to know how I need to set everything up.

How big of a refuge sump tank would I need to efficiently filter my display tank of 150G?

How does all the plumbing work? To be more exact I know I need a pump to go from the sump to the main tank, but do I need a pump coming from the main tank to the sump? Or is it all done with gravity of overflow? Refuge/sump will be on the bottom if that helps any? Also all equipment I want on bottom, Chiller and heater if I need them, protein skimmer, hydrometer (or does this need to be in the display tank?). How would I keep the sump or main tank from overflowing with a power outage?

Also would like to know with this kind of setup is it beneficial to having an ozone reactor or UV Steralizer, or are those things I can do with out?

I know alot of these are noobie questions, but been having trouble finding the answers on my own, since it seems that just about all tanks are different in regards to all this.

First off congratulations on the upgrade. As far as how big of a sump to go with, I agree with Allan go as big as you possibly can. I would shoot for a minimum of 15-20% of your total tank volume so somewhere around a 30gallon or larger sump should be a good starting place.

For plumbing again like Allan said you only want to pump up not down. Also you never want to try to match 2 pumps of one draining and one filling. To get the water from the sump to the display tank you will need a pump to pump the water up and into the tank. This water is filling the tank a X gph (this is determined by your return pump gph rating at the head difference between your tank and your sump) Now to get that water back down you would need an overflow box of some sort. There are 2 main kinds and sub categories of each. One involves having a tank drilled with holes in the glass, this is the much preferred way and if you are buying new it cost about the same. The other involves what is known as an overflow box. It is actually 2 boxes one inside the tank and one outside the tank. There is a "U" tube connecting the two boxes and it creates a siphon and drains the water from the box inside the tank to the exterior much like a siphon that you would use to clean your tank. This method relies on gravity and sometimes can be problematic after powerups. (But there is a cool new overflow design that totally prevents this issue.)

Both of these methods of draining involve a box of some form in the interior of the tank that extends to the top of the tank. The water that you are pumping up from the sump will make the water level in the display tank rise until it reaches the point where it will overflow into the box and then begin to drain into your sump. When the power is off your tank will drain what water is inside the box as well as any water that is above the water level in the tank. Make sure that you have this volume available in your sump so that in a power outage you wont get a flood.

As far as ozone and UV goes the are not a need however, they are nice to have in my opinion. Of the two 9 times out of 10 I would go ozone in either a dedicated reactor or a protein skimmer built for ozone use. If the benefits of this is something you think you might like to have in the future I would recommend ensuring to get a skimmer that can handle the use of ozone.