Love this thread... good info here.
I'm sockless... because I _know_ I'm not going to change sox often enough for them to do any good. Simply not going to happen. I HATE washing sox.
Looking at removing the sand from my system and seriously upgrading flow rates in the tank. A bare bottom system practically requires some sort of mechanical filtration... and I _know_ I'm not going to change sox... so I've been seriously looking at the various rollermat options.
My sump setup is a bit odd... honesly, I think the Bubble Magus will fit my system better than the others. Even with that, I'm going to need to do a little creative plumbing.
Anyone using a rollermat with a seperate pump, rather than using the overflow to feed it? If I do it that way, the original Theiling would make sense. Set it OUTSIDE my sump, plumbed so that it feeds back into my refugeum, with a properly sized pump in the skimmer section feeding it. I know it couldn't be as efficient, since not all of the overflow water runs through the filter media, but it's gotta be better than nothing.
I don't know if it will help your plumbing situation, but you can feed the drain to the BM from either side, and put the motor on either side as well. All the pictures show the motor on one side and drain on the other but if you put them both on the same side it makes it ~4-5" narrower.