NEW Tank build starts here

[sphelps]

Your return pump flow rate is independent from your skimmer flow rate, hence matching them doesn't serve a purpose. Unless you feed your overflow water directly into your skimmer you have no way of really assuring overflow water isn't bypassed anyway. Typically a skimmer sits in a sump chamber, and water flows through the chamber to the next. You'll have a very hard time trying to come up with a system that insure overflow water enters your skimmer only once prior to moving on and that no water from the overflow can bypass the skimmer before moving on. Your skimmer is already designed with the correct pump for skimmer contact time so you're better off insuring your skimmer chamber gets a decent turnover rate, once equilibrium hits and your skimmer is sized accordingly to bio load it really makes no difference what turnover rate your sump skimmer sees. It makes more sense to size your return pump to properly skim your display tank and keep organics from settling.