As long as you have a way to remove excess nutrients and add back in missing trace elements it would work fine. You can maintain a tank with nothing but water changes if that is the route you want to go.
No skimmer can be done. You may find your N and P begin to rise as you accumulate gunk in the sump, but that can be vacuumed out. Larger tanks tend to dose major elements because of the volume of water that would be needed to maintain stable parameters with water changes alone.