Yesterday, I bought a sump for the reef tank. It’s size is 24″x18″x18″ which fits snuggly in the cabinet on the right hand side.

This was the biggest size I could fit. I would have loved to have a 36″x15″x15″ sump, but there was no way to actually get it in there without some major hacking to the cabinet. But the different between the 2 in terms of water volume isn’t really that big. Having the smaller but taller sump leaves the entire left hand side of the cabinet for other things.

I’m planning to get an external skimmer to sit next to the sump. I’m currently looking at the Reef Octopus Hurricane 800 shorty, which will fit quite nicely (and it looks good). The idea is to connect this directly to the input from the weir, and the output into the first chamber of the sump. Might have to wait until next pay day before I buy one of those.

What I need to work out now is how to divide up the sump into its different chambers. My current thoughts are 3 chambers: Input -> Refugium/DSB -> Return.

I’ll put up some photos when there is something more exciting to look at (it is just an empty glass tank at the moment).