Turning a sump tank into a secondary display

[teckademics]

I might be alone on this but I don't like when people hide sumps. I enjoy seeing engineering side of things like clean and organized pipes and wires and machines. That being said I'm not building a sump to hide all my equipment, but to add more space to display the complexity of my SW setup. I'm building a sump that will serve a purpose of a secondary display tank.

Here is my inspiration I'm going off of.

However I'm going to be building this sump almost fully from Synergy Reef Systems, Quality Marine Aquarium Products! to give it that one of a kind look. I'll keep you posted. Please feel free to post suggestions as I go.


Currently I'm in the planning stage, My main tank is a 55g but Planning on a 20-30g sump.

 

[TrialandError]

Here's mine

 

[feh]

I considered cutting out the door so my fuge could be on display and still hide the equipment and other sections, but didn't pull the trigger.

 

[TrialandError]

I have a panel on my stand with a window that shows only the display area so no wire or equipment can be seen.

 

[TrialandError]

Here is how the whole tank looks with the panel.

 

[fishroomlady]

^^that looks really cool! great idea to start a thread on this.....my sump is pretty boring, maybe it needs a little spicing up

 

[redfishbluefish]

I purposely left a panel out of the door of the sump/refugium area to expose the refugium. I now have rock and a mated pair of clowns in there.

 

[Ladysaber]

I would totally do that, except my demon spawn [emoji173]️ would probably throw a freakin hockey puck at it and shatter it. As it is, I don't even allow whiffle balls in my house. My husband thinks I'm too extreme, but I'm not the one that fished his iPhone out of the tank, that was put there by his darling son.. Lol

 

[jschultzbass]

Great idea! I've been thinking of doing the same thing with my new build. Show off the sump!

 

[Intricateart]

150 gal display, 55 gal baffled display refugium

 

[TrialandError]

Very nice setup