I have had a few sumps now starting with a 40 breeder I picked up from a $1/g petco sale. It was very simple straight through design with a return section where my skimmer sat. A baffle that water flowed over into a cryptic zone like area that I had an ATS waterfall type from Turbo's aquatics on top and a bunch of live rock inside and a Reversed Undergravel filter plate on the bottom. Then an over, under, over baffle setup to a return section.
It was a simple setup and silicone in some pane glass was easier and just as messy as I thought. For me at least. I think I looked at many over at Melev's reef too and decided on that one.
http://melevsreef.com/category/articles/diy/sumps
I then moved where my sump was located in the basement last year and I ran across the design of the trigger systems crystal elite 36 and really liked it's layout and would work better then my 40 breeder layout in the new location. Except I didn't exactly use it in the way it was designed. Area 1 was where all my drain lines ran too and had several marine pure blocks in and the ATS sitting on top of. Area 2 is where my skimmer was. Area 3 the return.
Just beautiful huh? I'm much more about function and maximizing space then aesthetics.
It wasn't perfect as I would rather the skimmer first in the series and couldn't fit a very big UGF plate anywhere in there and didn't get around to it yet. I was planning on using that setup for who knows how long but Petco this year offered 75 gallon tanks in there $1/g sale in my area....
So, I designed this and again used some silicone to easily and messily slap in some glass panes.
I based it off the trigger system design but with some tweaks so I could have the skimmer first and a "bio" like area. I don't really want to call it a refugium as it's not your typical one as I don't keep it lit at all and just let what ever grow and settle in there.
So, just like I had with the Trigger sump all drains go to that first section where the skimmer now sits and to the bio area is a flow over baffle. Then to the return is an under/over/under baffle setup.
This is to prevent the left side from ever being emptied. Say for some really terrible reason my skimmer goes nuts and starts filling up the skimmate bucket and murphy is really on his game and either the switches in the buck don't work to shutdown the skimmer or what's happened before starts siphoning out just the skimmer section could get drained. Assuming my other failsafes don't fail too. Lots of failsafes in place. Basically from failures of others or myself that I've learned from and put something into place to help prevent from happening again.
The flow over from the skimmer section also forces all the microbubbles to the surface. The return section is pulling water from the bottom where they shouldn't be. The ATS drains may cause some bubbles, which they do, but those are bigger then the skimmers microbubbles and rise pretty quick and even if it got under the returns first baffle would be killed by the second set of them.
The space between and under the baffles are 2" so allows the 1400gph that I have going through the sump go through fairly smoothly and not like a raging rapids causing bubbles.
I tried to calculate out the baffle heights to maximize water volume but not over flow the sump when the return is off. Which after implementing the new sump it was perfect with about 2" to spare. The baffle height and running height is just over 14" and drops about 2" into the return section. Bubbles have 0 chance of hitting the return pump. The bio area was the perfect size and I was able to get a bigger UGF plate to place on the bottom. I got one for a 90 gallon that comes with 2 plates. So, in 40 years if I accidentally crack the one I have a spare (PaulB knows what I'm talking about... lol) . I think it's a 16"x22.5" plate. I have about 100gph being pushed down into the plate. My turbo's aquatics ATS sits nicely on top of that section too and looking to get a bigger one with his Rev4 version.
and everything fitting in there perfectly.
