38 gallon sump?

Hello,
so im setting up a 75 gallon aquarium. I will be using an old 38 gallon; 36'' (L) x 10''(W) x 18''(H). I may incorporate a fuge but I wont be adding a reverse lighting system to it (so i suppose this is no to macroalgaes) so in the fuge will be about 6'' sand bed or so with some LR pieces.
I was wondering if anyone had any designs on how to make a quality sump, with regards to bioballs, carbon filtering, and such.

thanks in advance for your responses

 

IMO, no carbon or bioballs needed. Unless bioballs are faithfully maintained, they just become a nitrate factory. Don't use them. You can get carbon in your system in a thousand ways. You can just put it in a filter sock over the tube where the water goes into the sump. If you have no macro it can't really be called a refugium IMO. In your sump you can have live rock under a trickle or just sitting around for extra filtration. IMO Live Sand isn't a great thing to have in the sump because it can mess up pumps. Just have your skimmer in there. Live Rock is your main filtration.

 

well if the sump would only have LR and/or sand, whats the point to it other than adding water volume to the tank? Couldn't I just have the 75gallon with about 70 pounds of LR and a large GPH of flow.

 

Alot of people use sumps to hide heaters and skimmers. They also increase evaporation which let me stop at the pet store for water and other stuff more often =)