UPDATE 5-2-16
Exciting news!
The sump is here!
I picked it up from
www.buildinganobsession.com this weekend and they knocked it out of the park!
We went back and forth a little on design. There were two things we needed to achieve.
The first was a large refugium, and the refugium had to be the first section, per Triton.
I was shooting for around 12% of the tank volume based on Triton's recommendations and my past experience with a workhorse refugium.
I think we ended up with right around 20g of water volume. MORE THAN ENOUGH!
Second, the Elos drains (similar to beananimal or herbie style setups) is capable of A LOT of flow.
BAO was worried about turbulence with that much water flowing through the sump. So they designed two devices that would help with this and can be seen in the pics below.
First is the output from the drain. There is an elbow and then a long slotted tube so the water is more dispersed across the width of the sump.
And since this is the fuge section, this also creates a gyre which should keep things circulating.
Because the flow is so high, I'm not sure what's going to happen with the macros.
I could imagine the possibility of the gyre being too intense so maybe I can play with the cap on the end, letting some of the water out that way to control the flow out the slots a little.
I won't know until everything is up and running. I'm shooting for around 12x flow through the sump.
And the second way to deal with the turbulence is the black ramp on the other side of the first baffle in the skimmer section.
A couple of other details worth noting...
Heater holders were tucked in under the ramp.
Plenty of 1/4" water line connections for dosing tubes, ATO, etc.
I hate socks and Triton doesn't recommend them either, but just for a little extra filtering if needed, we added a space for some filter pad/sponge material in the return section, along the adjustable height skimmer baffle.
And the one thing missing that I'll show once the sump is in the stand, is a magnetic probe holder that is a new design by BAO that really seals off the magnets from the saltwater.
Apparently they did some extensive testing under high pressure and were finally confident enough to release the design into real world use, something they've avoided in the past.
I know many of us, including myself, have seen the damage that can be caused by water penetrating seals and causing magnets to rust in the aquarium.
Total size of the sump is around over 37" long by 22" front to back and 18" high.
It's a beast and barely fits in the stand. One door had to come off to get it in.
Anyway, the sump is in my possession and I was able to take a few shots before putting it in the stand.
The only background I had that was large enough was black so it's a little hard to see in these pics, but the back panel of the sump is black.
Top and bottom are white, and the baffles are red... and BAO played with contrast by adding some more black with the ramp and heater holders.
I'm so stoked with how it turned out!
