Hey so here is an update. Unfortunately we lost the Kole, pretty sure it was Velvet, came in at the 2 week mark, and hit fast. By the time I got back from LFS with gear to do a hospital setup, and meds to treat the Velvet, he was gone... Was working with reefsquad to id/treat it, but just couldn't act fast enough once we noticed symptoms.
Anyway, that was a week ago, and we're moving on. More lessons learned, and we now have a fairly full marine medicine cabinet going, and a full hospital tank setup (and some major planned revisions to our onboarding/QT protocol which I'll probably document as I work on that as well).
On the brighter side, this past weekend we FINALLY found time to install the new sump! Was a full weekend long project, but we got it done.
So we shut the system down, put bubblers in the DT to keep it aerated, I had to cut one run of plumbing and re-cement it (adjusting length) so wanted to give 24h for that to cure and de-gas before re-circulating water through it. We took the opportunity to kill the lights for the whole weekend too, to help with the minor algae outbreak we're having right now.
Then we got to work on plumbing, assembling everything, 3D Printing some custom parts, cleaning the old sump parts, preparing new parts, etc...
The baffles are all custom cut glass, the sock holder is made on my 3D Printer, as is the support for the skimmer. Skimmer is brand new Bubble Magus DC skimmer (basically silent), Return pump is 1050gph lifegard aquatics, which has was brought from old sump, and has served us very well and is also very silent (FAR quieter than our old Mag).
Water flows in back right corner, flows over baffle into sock chamber which has a whirlpool effect and flows into the sock via custom sock holder box.
Water then flows under baffle into the equipment chamber (skimmer and heaters). And over the next baffle into the fuge which is a low flow zone.
If the sock plugs, the design allows it to flow over the box lip, and baffle, into the equipment chamber without negatively impacting anything else (flow continues as expected, just bypasses plugged sock).
Fuge overflows into media/reactor chamber (currently a small bag of Seachem Matrix media in there I'm going to try out). And that flows through a pair of baffles to trap bubbles before the return pump chamber which is also on the righthand side.
This allows the plumbing to all be on the right side where the vertical run in my custom stand is, reducing amount of plumbing, and keeping it all out of the way to make it easy to work in the sump.
I also built a "basket" for the rubble in the fuge. Which is made of egg crate and zip ties. This allows me to easily lift the rubble during cleaning/water changes.
Basically shut system off, it backflows up to higher level in the sump, then siphon off enough water into a small bin (big enough to hold the basket), which allows me to lift the basket, give it a good shake to dislodge any settled detritus, move it to the bin to store, siphon out all the remaining water in the sump (vacuuming up detritus in the process), and then replace with clean salt water, and return the basket to it's place.
This allows me to do about 25g water change in an 80g total system, fairly easily.
Sock holder keeps a good seal forcing water through the sock, but also allows easy pop out and change of socks with system running, and will minimize detritus making it to the rubble and media side.
Will see how it goes! But I expect this new sump will significantly ease regular tank maintenance, and significantly improve water quality for our little friends!
Here are some pics of the process:
New inlet plumbing segments (attaching to existing unions, though the emergency is now getting a valve, it didn't have one before)
Cleared out the old sump, and ATO, got the chamber all clean...
Interesting story on this step, I was made very glad I put that sealed membrane in there! I was pulling rubble out of the old sump into the bin of tank water you see in the bottom left. When suddenly I heard trickling water... And was like "Umm, where is that coming from!?!?!" look down and to my horror there was like half an inch of water in the sump chamber! (that's like a couple gallon lol). I immediately went into emergency mode, and grabbed the siphon and finished siphoning off the sump, assuming that my moving the rubble cracked the tank somehow or something, and it was leaking.
Anyway, turns out I'm a bit of a dummy, accidentally knocked my ATO hose out of the sump when working in there, and it started to passively siphon water from the ATO into the chamber! lol
So yeah, no broken tank, but still put like 2g of water into that chamber with no ill-effects because it's nicely sealed for exactly that reason. Soaked it up with towels, and cleaned it all up for this pic, and all is good!
New Skimmer on it's 3D Printed Riser (to keep it at recommended operating depth). Also shows the 3D Printed sock holding system, which seals that chamber forcing water flow through the sock (but is easily removable for cleaning/maintenance)
Closer shot of the sock holder (note all 3D Printed parts printed in food-safe PET plastic, which from everything I can figure is totally reef-safe):
Closer shot of the skimmer:
The rubble basket I made from egg-crate and zip ties, to ease tank maintenance:
Now the new sump is installed in the chamber, freshly washed/rinsed Matrix media bag added to media chamber, and pump is connected to return flex line (switched to black hose, from clear hose, to keep growth in the hose down, last time was clear and it got gunked up fast due to growth in the tube):
New Plumbing installed (yes I know these valves are very close together, will make things awkward, but it works, unfortunately only limited space available)
Beginning to fill the sump with fresh salt water (fuge lights are on here):
More Filling, no leaks in baffles, all sealed up well. And flow behaving exactly as expected:
Nearly full, fuge has live rubble and freshly pruned chaeto ball in it now
Sump fully operational:
And everyone is happy, tank back to normal, no more "intrusive" bubbles (the bubblers really wierd out the fish) and the lights are on for a couple hours before bed. Resuming normal (reduced slightly and adjusted spectrum due to combatting algae) lighting next day (today)
Last but not least, here is a short youtube video of the sump in action:
been crazy busy with work, and had little time for my aquatic friends 
so I think we need to get him another friend...
