Bare botom + DSB fuge = win?

I've been playing around with the idea of going bare bottom on the 180 upgrade, and having a 36" x 9" x 22" fuge section in my sump with a 5-6" sand bed (plus mangroves and macros). Will this get me the benefts of both, or is my fuge / sand bed too small?

Also I was going to paint the back of the tank black this weekend, and I was thinking about painting the bottom outside to match. Anyone ever seen this done? how did it look?

~Will.

 

this is what Im thinking of for my 75.. I will paint the back and bottom black on the outside..

 

I have asked before and never got a answer. How many square inches of surface are for a given volume. How much will a DSB process. No real answers to that. 36x9 gives about 300 sq in". Have no idea if that is adequate. Sure can't hurt. Many folks do RDSB tobe able tochange out instead of running DSB in the DT. You certainly are not way out in left field with this approach.

 

I'm running a DSB in my sump on my 150 BB Cube. Everything seems to be doing fine. The tank has been up just over a year.