New to Sumps. Have a few questions.

[Madreefer]

For your sump I would go live rock for the first chamber. Bio balls are crap, fuge in the center and skimmer for your last chamber. Live rock is an awesome filtration system. People will say that having the having the skimmer after the fuge is going to kill the pods. Not true as they still get by it. Hopefully the skimmer won't create micro bubbles. I also do not run filter socks as I think they are a pain in the butt with the constant cleaning of them. As for water changes, turn off your return pump and skimmer of course. Do them from the sump and add your water that way as well. Why stress out your livestock, best to disturb as little as possible. If you have enough flow you should'nt have much detris build up. As for the water circulating in the sump, it all goes to the DT anyways and dosing gets distributed through your DT evenly anyways so just put it in. If your going to run an ATO you want your float switch in the sump, it helps if you keep the proper water level in your sump. I've had some pretty good skimmers and the water level makes a huge difference in a skimmers performance if it is kept at the proper level.

[intarsiabox]

Originally Posted by Fellow

@SaltyNuts - The folks at Marine Aquaria are building it for me.

Here I thought going to a sump system was going to simplify things for me.

It really is quite simple. Water goes into the sump, filtered in some matter and then pumped back out. As long as you aren't pumping out more water than your overflows can drain there is really very little to go wrong and your DT will look so much nicer without heaters, probes, filters, etc in it to kill the natural look of a reef. You'll be glad you went this route!

[Lance]

Originally Posted by intarsiabox

It really is quite simple. Water goes into the sump, filtered in some matter and then pumped back out. As long as you aren't pumping out more water than your overflows can drain there is really very little to go wrong and your DT will look so much nicer without heaters, probes, filters, etc in it to kill the natural look of a reef. You'll be glad you went this route!

Absolutely!