Unusual setup

So im desighning a new sump for my 75 gallon drilled tank ive been working on for a while. I recently picked up a wet dry trickle sump that is rated for a 3oo hundred gallon tank. therefore its got two trickle chambers and a large return portion. What im thinking of doing is useing one of the wet dry trickle chambers and then adding a wall afterwards, where id add some live rock rubble and chaeto alge. it would then go through the spongey material and into the return chamber where i want to put heaters and put in a protein skimmer. however to fight micro bubbles i thought about putting the return of the protein skimmer into the refugium. Then i wil put a return back to the display. Anyone have any suggestions ? is this a good idea ? also what protein skimmer would you go with and what return pump ? im not sure what type of flow im going to need.

 

I assume by wet/dry you mean something like bio-balls? From what I've read most people shy away from them. I'd put the skimmer in that first section where the bio-balls are then do your fuge like you had planned and then the return area. Any idea how many gallons the sump is? I've read that sump flow should be about 10x the volume of your sump. My sump is a 40 gal and I'll be pumping about 5 feet back up to my DT so if I went with a Mag7 return pump with head loss I'd be right around 400 gal/hr running at full steam. I'll probably jump to a Mag9.5 and crank it down just a bit, but my fuge is also on a separate feed direct from the DT so I can slow down the flow through there as desired.

 

Live rock rubble is just a replacement for bioballs. No need for a second chamber for it. Whether you use the bioballs or rubble at all is a different debate that you need to read up on and decide form yourself.

Jeff