Sump Design? Is this a good water flow design?

[Rhinotronics]

Hey guys! Hope all is well who reads this. I got a question. I have a sump design that I am questioning whether it is a good design for water flow and over all design for best use.

Ok So heres how it goes and forgive the drawings.
Water flows down from side over flows into the first chamber behind the socks.
Water then flows into the 4 socks for filtration
Water then flows over into the Protein Skimmer zone and goes through the portion skimmer
Water then flows into the Refugium and also the return. The refugium to the right and the return pump zone behind the skimmer.
The refugium will also flow into the return pump zone as well.
Then when the water is being returned it will also drop off some water back into the refugium alone with back into the tank.

My main question is,
Number 1: Is this a good design for a sump? Have you ever seen it laid out this way?
Number 2: Should the refugium not flow back into the skimmer or will it even flow back into the skimmer?
Number 3: Should a sump all flow in one direction from one zone to the next or can they have zones that flow back and forth between each other such as this one?


The tank will also have a 25 Gallon ATO with side Dose resivoirs

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

 

[143MPCo]

All in all, it looks good.

Personally, I would feed the refugium from a drain line and not the return as that would be less nutrient rich, don't get me wrong, either would work but IMO feeding it directly off a drain would produce more nutrition for pods and macro macroalgae.

 

[AndrewNC]

Assuming you're putting a control valve return to the refugium, I see no problem. Are you building this yourself or getting it done for you?

 

[Rhinotronics]

Assuming you're putting a control valve return to the refugium, I see no problem. Are you building this yourself or getting it done for you?

Getting it done. This is the design the LFS came up with. I thought it seemed a little different and along with a few other questionable things that have happened, it now just made me question the design. I have read that you don't want your refugium dumping into a skimmer as it can remove the good things that a refugium is supposed to be there for. So I am just looking for opinions before it's too late.

 

[AndrewNC]

Getting it done. This is the design the LFS came up with. I thought it seemed a little different and along with a few other questionable things that have happened, it now just made me question the design. I have read that you don't want your refugium dumping into a skimmer as it can remove the good things that a refugium is supposed to be there for. So I am just looking for opinions before it's too late.

Yea I didn't realize that. I never had a refugium in the last chamber but I believe you would want it to go straight back to the return section rather than skimmer than return