- i think a bit too overwhelming for him lol
sump and chiller will be very good for you especially in the long run but that is not say that you cannot set up one without these.
I think as mentioned in your earlier post, you do have some constraints in the space etc and need to be sensitive to your wife's liking to the tank setup as well.
(I have been there lol)
Work within your constraints.
Is the space limitation fixed? If you only have that 50 cm space in your cabinet to play with and you would like to house your power plug in it, then I do not think you have much space for sump. Do note that the maxspect LED driver (if you intend to purchase this light) is quite huge and will take up about 1/4 of your cabinet space already. Not sure how you can manage to squeeze in a sump there. A neater setup would then be to house your cannister inside. Your skimmer will have to be HOB type. There is a smaller version MCE 300 but I am not sure how it hangs and if it is similar to MCE600 in terms of space wastage. Else the Tunze 9002 should work well for you.
Then maybe you can have an ATO and keep a top up resevoir tank in the cabinet too and not worry about the evaporation rate when you go oversea.
The key point is that without sump and chiller, you need to practise sensibility in stocking the type of LS and have discipline with stocking level. You will need to be more diligent with husbandry maintenance as well. Fan is a MUST imo without chiller. The LED light will then be overkill now. Switch to T5 perhaps. Sometimes I do not know whether to advise newbies to get better eqpt or start with basic ones after seeing so many people decomm within the 1st year. Even come across someone who spent approx $6k and then decomm within 5 weeks. really sad to see that.
So the other school of thought is that start with basic 1st. If your interest intensify, you can upgrade later. Yes you will some $$ but it could be better than spending a lot of $$ n all the nice eqpt and having to decomm it later if your wife is not that supportive or if you lose interest. Am I making sense here?