I made a pretty good DIY Needle Wheel Protein Skimmer for my salt water tanks and it skims excellent! My wife has a 75 gal fresh water turtle tank with 2 turtles, a pleco, some little cat fish (maintenance crew), bunch of snails and a few junk fish. I currently use a Little Giant 2-MDQX-SC...
I sort of posted this before, but I hate the "Imagestation" web host lins. I have some decent DIY filtration projects on my (work in progress) web site:
www.randystacye.com
I would use a sump if you do not have one already. I would use a UV steralizer, higher wattage the better. I recently purchased a JEBO UV on eBay. Though cheap, they work like a champ.
If absolute clarity is what your looking for I could suggest a DIY canister filter that I would place in your...