Now that I have been running this sump for a while, I feel like I can give a decent review.
As mentioned before, this is the AF-300 from Eshopps. It's a 36" sump rated for 200-300 gallons and up to 2000gph (we'll get back to that part...).
Some more quick specs:
- Total Water Volume: 38 US Gallons
- Dimensions: 36" x 16" x 16"
- Skimmer Chamber: 14" x 15.5"
- Refugium Chamber: 14" x 15.5"
- Return Pump Chamber: 8" x 15.5"
- Filter Socks: 1x 7"
Included in the box is the sump (one would hope), a single 7" filter sock, wet dry media holder, refugium weir, 2ea 1"x3' flexible return hoses, and 4 pieces of ceramic biomedia.
Immediately apparent is the build quality. All the seams are flawless, the edges are well polished, overall the fit and finish is excellent; it's quite the striking bit of kit...
The first thing everybody asks is "how the heck does water move through that thing?". So, lets address that first.
Looking at the picture above:
1. Water enters from the 3 1" bulkheads in the rear center of the tank.
2. A small amount of water passes through a port at the bottom of the drain chamber into the refugium. This water is unfiltered and contains all the goodies coming out of your tank. The refugium then fills and overflows directly into the return chamber on the far right.
3. Another small port near the top of the drain chamber flows into the return chamber over the wet/dry media basket. Again, this water is unfiltered.
4. At this point, water overflows from the drain chamber into the filter sock chamber (center rear). If the filter sock becomes clogged, water will overflow this chamber into the skimmer chamber on the left.
5. Filter water leaves the sock chamber and flows into the skimmer chamber
6. Water leaves the skimmer chamber through a passage under the sock chamber and flows into the return chamber
It's a bit of a maze but once you wrap your head around it, I think it's really clever. It totally avoids the skimmer first vs refugium first debate by providing both dirty water to the fuge and filtered water to the skimmer. The wet/dry section is a nice touch as well. I'm not sure the exact total impact it has, but it's another varied habitat for beneficial bacteria and that is always a good thing.
Since the sump is so compartmentalized, lets have a look at each compartment...
Drain/Filter Sock Compartment
This is, perhaps, the most straight forward compartment, but it has some nice touches. I'm a huge fan of the 3 drain bulkheads. This allows for simple plumbing of Bean Animal style drains and is something I haven't seen in a lot of other sumps. The bulkheads here are good quality and have an extension pipe on each one to reduce splashing (I did cut the extension off on my emergency drain to make it loud and obvious if it's in use). I also like the 7" sock, I feel they're easier to clean than the 4" ones. My one complaint here is water splashes pretty heavily as it enters the sock. I tried a few different silencers but I had the best result with a piece of coarse filter floss fit into the sock. The cover does an nice job of containing any salt creep.
Skimmer Compartment
By far the biggest compartment, there's a massive amount of space for skimmers, reactors whatever. Currently, I only have my Octo Essence 130 in there and it takes up maybe a third of the space. Also in this section are 5 dosing ports and 5 probe holders. I'm using a magnetic probe holder to allow for better height control but the dosing ports are very nice. They have 1/4" compression fittings at the top and an acrylic tube that extends down to the water. I have mine cutoff just above the waterline to help reduce buildup on the tubes. This compartment contains my only real complaint with the sump, and it has to do with the return baffle. It's not adjustable, like...at all. This means you can't control the water height in the skimmer section, you're stuck with the ~5" they give you. I'm currently getting around this by using my ATO to control the sump level (I'm keeping it at ~9"), but this is far from ideal. My ATO does pretty good at maintaining +/-1/8" but if yours allows for significant rise and fall then you may run into problems. This also means the level in the skimmer section and the return section will be the same. Not really a bad thing, just something to keep in mind. My other issue with the baffle is water leaves the compartment from the bottom so there's no surface skimming. This allows scum and foam to build up on the surface. My solution to this was to simply put in a cheap powerhead and aim it at the surface.
(From top to bottom: Filter sock overflow, Filter sock drain, Channel to return section)
The sump centers around having an excellent refugium solution and it's just that, excellent. The compartment is quite large compared to most other sumps and is very flexible in how you can set it up. I currently have a mix of rock, bio media and algae but you could easily set it up with a DSB or mud bed, purely algae, macro display, I even thought it might make a cool species specific display. By diverting from the main drain, the water flow through the chamber is very gentle, maybe 100gph or so; no chance of blasting all you pods and mud bed out of the sump
. I'm also a big fan of the opaque walls, they do a great job of limiting light bleed into other chambers. There is one strange design choice though; the skimmer compartment has a lovely euro-brace all the way around but the fuge for whatever reason doesn't. This means the front of the fuge section bows out about 1/4". I'm not worried about it structurally but...why?
(Here you can see the bowing of the front panel)
The return chamber is fairly spacious and I'm able to fit 2 Varios 6's and 2 heaters without too much issue. As I mentioned earlier, the water level in this section is quite low by default. So low in fact that my pumps were pulling air on full power. Once I raised the water level it was fine, but something to watch out for. There is also a float valve mounted here for your ATO supply. It's a nice touch but it's mounted too low for me to make use of (It seems they may have raised this in newer production sumps). This is also where the wet/dry basket mounts. It simply hangs on the back wall next to the port from the drain chamber. There are 3 compartments that hold whatever you want to put in them; I'm using 2" Marinepure cubes and they work great.
Conclusion
Overall, I think it's a great sump. It has a unique and well executed design and the build quality is fantastic. All in all, I'm very happy with it. It does have a few flaws, but they're easy enough to work around and I'm happy to deal with them. A lot of reviews I have seen complain about the weird water path, but, honestly, I think they did a very good job with it and I think it address several (admittedly niche) problems a lot of sumps have. I also think a lot of the issues others have had may stem from low flow (see, I told you I'd get back to it!) With the way the water flows into the fuge and wet/dry basket, you lose a decent amount of flow before you get to the filter sock, maybe 200-300gph (I have no way to measure this, just eyeballing it). As such, I'd say you need at least around 800-1000gph running through your system; this is about where I'm at and everything seems to be moving as intended. Another common complaint is water just flows over the filter sock and out into the skimmer section. I haven't seen anything like this, I suppose if your sock was always super dirty and clogged maybe but I change mine weekly and haven't seen any problems. One last mark against the design is the really isn't a good way to integrate an off the shelf fleece roller. Klir has a 7" drop in model but I'm not sure it would quite work. I am, however, working on a custom 7" sock replacement roller so stay tuned for that
Wrapping up, I think this is a great sump and if you're looking for something with a great refugium chamber and plenty of space for equipment, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.
Thanks for reading!
Obligatory Cat-Tax
