Justin....#JAMAS
Valuable Member
Hey everone, so i made my own 20g long sump about 3 months ago and so far has been doing great,i have a 75 g mixed reef thats 2 years old and maturing very nicely and growing fast, but i just wanted to run thru a couple things and see if i should rearrange some things or what in that 20g sump......so the inlet comes in on the right side into a filter sock compartment i made and right below the filter sock is a few pieces of live rock...i also have a bh-50 octo skimmer int in the same chamber but i enclosed the filter sock inlet area with two pieces of glass in the corner......i have a 7'' piece of glass next so the water kind of gently waterfalls into my big refugium where i have Chaeto growing fast, populated with pods and some snails down there as well. there is also a few rubble pieces of live rock, very little sand and a nice amount of Matrix rocks too. Next, i have the bubble trap with a piece of egg crate i siliconed so i could place my bag of carbon on and than the water goes thru the bubble trap and into the return! i really havent rinsed the matrix down there in the fuge at all, just sometime siphon little buildup of detritus and thats it........so i was thinking about taking all the matrix rocks out of the fuge and making sure they are clean and put them in a bag, but was curious, should i put the bag of matrix rocks in the first chamber? or should i put the matrix bag where my bag of carbon would go right after the fuge? i also just ordered some Marine Pure High Performance Biofilter Media GEMS that should be here in a few days......ive also been thinking about doing away with the filter sock and just adding more live rock where the inlet is and than the matrix bag and the marine pure in that first chamber as well, but really not sure. ive just heard so many things and wanted the community here to give me some ideas or what is the most beneficial place for the biological, and if i should do away with the filter sock? thanks and im sorry for the paragraph but had to get you the details lol...here are a few pics i just snapped...
When I moved the Chaeto out of the way I was actually very surprised how clean the sand and matrix rocks looked!!!! But sill wondering if I should bag them and put them somewhere else......I used to have black filter pads in the bubble trap but I removed them bc I felt it was trapping a lot of detritus......alright, post finished lol any advice would be greatly appreciated or suggestions!
When I moved the Chaeto out of the way I was actually very surprised how clean the sand and matrix rocks looked!!!! But sill wondering if I should bag them and put them somewhere else......I used to have black filter pads in the bubble trap but I removed them bc I felt it was trapping a lot of detritus......alright, post finished lol any advice would be greatly appreciated or suggestions!
