I'll throw in my sump design. I played with a few ideas before settling on this one. The sock filters the major stuff out, so the focus on the rest of the design is biological. The water goes from the sock compartment over the top of the panel into the mini bio-ball area. I stocked this with one box of Marineland mini bio-balls and the flow of the water keeps them rotating and spinning. You could use K2 or any other media here too. I have two pieces of gutter foam at the bottom to keep the bio-balls in this area. The water travels out the bottom and into the media area then. I keep a 8x8x4 block of Cermedia MarinePure in here in front and 2L of SubstratPro in a laundry bag in back. The water does flow through these, but is not forced through.
Sidetrack - I tried another design as well which includes flow through media, which I'll post too - I didn't see any real world differences in using either, I did find it harder to maintain the media in the flow through design because it was open media and harder to remove.
Back to the original, the water then flows over the last panel into the return area where the heater is and the pump. The heater could also go elsewhere, in my tank the pump cuts off before getting low enough to expos the heater so it's safe. I also have this divided off from the media because this section is where you'll notice the water goes down as it evaporates. At full my water level is a 1/4" below the last panel. The panel is angled so the sound of the water isn't heard as the level drops, it just runs down the side of the panel.
Sidetrack - I tried another design as well which includes flow through media, which I'll post too - I didn't see any real world differences in using either, I did find it harder to maintain the media in the flow through design because it was open media and harder to remove.
Back to the original, the water then flows over the last panel into the return area where the heater is and the pump. The heater could also go elsewhere, in my tank the pump cuts off before getting low enough to expos the heater so it's safe. I also have this divided off from the media because this section is where you'll notice the water goes down as it evaporates. At full my water level is a 1/4" below the last panel. The panel is angled so the sound of the water isn't heard as the level drops, it just runs down the side of the panel.
