20 Long Sump Build

[gettaReef]

The displays a 210. Turkey wings are live clams that do an excellent job of filtering the water. I don't know of anywhere you can buy just them. Mine came in on the live rock I buy from Florida. The whole idea of the deep sand bed is that it converts the nitrate and removes it. It does that by no air penetrating the bed. Of course the macro does the same thing. I just like to have as much removal as possible and the fact that I feed the refusium from clean water. It flows from my return pump through a gfo/carbon reactor before entering the refusium. That way I'm only removing what makes it through all the filtering, skimming, reactors rather than dumping all the detritus into the fuge. If the macro suddenly takes off I know it's time to change the gfo media. Lots of views on the right or wrong way to feed the fuge but this method seems to be working well for me and the fuge is full of pods and macros.

Very cool sump there. Think I'll do something similar w my 75 once I upgrade to something much bigger (currently use the 75 as a display). Looking at the sump, how do you feed your fuge section (I'm assuming the fuge is the far right and middle is the return)? You said you feed the fuge filtered water so just curious how you feed it when it is on the far right side (i thought that usually on sumps where the middle chamber is the return with one side having skimmer/gfo/carbon/wtvr and other side containing fuge , the skimmer section and fuge is fed by water straight from the overflow, with the fuge section having a valve to lower the flow)? Again just curious, thanks!

 

[Harold Green]

My return pump line comes up and spits into a tree with four ball valves to control flow. Two taps return water to the overflow areas of the display. One u's down into the sump in the event the return pump flows more water than the overflows can handle( I sized the return pump to match the tank overflows, around 1200gph), the forth tap reduces to a small line that feeds the reactors and their return flows into the sump. And to make it more confusing the reactors are to the left of the sump so I have one line running from the return to the reactors and a return line running all the way to the sump. They're small lines routed near the top of the stand and mostly out of the way. Overflow water runs through socks into skimmer chamber then into return chamber. Some return(clean water) flows through reactors then into fuge which overflows back into return pump chamber. That way water is flowing into return pump from both directions. I don't know if I can manage to make it more confusing. The main thing is I'm pumping clean water into the fuge and returning it to the pump chamber. Any left over nitrates and phospates should already be low before the plants and sand bed get their chance. No this won't give you fantastic macro growth but it will give you much lower nitrates but that's my opinion and I'm sure there are those who would suggest just the opposite methods. It the end it boils down to what you feel works best for you.

 

[gettaReef]

Lol "I don't know if I can manage to make it more confusing". That all makes sense, thanks for explaining. You're right; in the end all that matters is if it works for you and for the system