Sump Help??

[anthony1238]

I have what I believe to be a Amiracle Sea Reef Wet/dry sump. I have this same setup as this pic:

I don't have any Bio Balls. How would you run this sump?? what would you add and where. and what order. What would you change? I have live rock in my tank and some in the sump now. Nothing is up and running yet so i can make changes. should I add a chamber for a refugium? if so where? please let me know.

 

[mr_x]

it's hard to convert one of these. i would put some rock rubble in the bio ball chamber and call it a day.
if you remove the drip tray you could put chaeto in the first section and put a light over it i guess.
get rid of the sponge.

 

[anthony1238]

right now there are bigger chunks of live rock where the bio balls belong, can i put filter floss in where the drip trap is to quite it a bit? or would that cause nitrates? also get rid of the sponge for same reason?
now lets say the chamber after the sponge is just wide open. and I need to put the return and a skimmer, should I make a t shaped chamber so that the water that just dripped over the live rock is fed into a chamber that lead to a Mag 3 pump and to my protien skimmer, and use the out put of the skimmer to fill the the chamber next to it that will be pumped with a mag 7 for a return back to the tank? will that work the way i want it to?
So after the water enters the sump it drips through filter floss down to live rock then fed into protien skimmer that outputs to the return chamber basicly, it that the best way i could set this up?

 

[ca161406]

i kinda have the same situation...but im putting lr under the bioball grate and put the "good" bio balls in. then skimmer then return. ima have to do some cutting to get it to fit though

 

[mr_x]

my suggestion would be to start from scratch and sell this wet/dry.
i know it sounds like a waste, but it would be alot easier, to simply glue some baffles in a standard glass tank. it would also end up being alot more "user friendly". if you have the room for it. one of the "breeder" style tanks would work perfect for this purpose. you will have plenty of room for a skimmer and a refugium.
if you are hell-bent on using this wet/dry, i would get rid of the drip tray completely. just hang the drain hose right in the first section. if it's loud, i might purchase one of those filter sock holders that hang on the side and use a filter sock. something that's easy to change out. any sort of sponge or mesh filter is going to trap detrius and need to be cleaned every few days to once a week.
as far as the "T" shaped baffle system you described, i don't know. you could always give it a shot and see what happens. you already own the wet/dry. the trouble i see is that once you alter is, you can't sell it anymore.

 

[anthony1238]

and modifications i do the the wet/dry would just be plexy glass and silicon. both can be scrapped off with a razor. so not to worried about it. I'll try it out only problem I see is the return pump will pump the water faster than the protien skimmer can fill it. hopefully it works though.