Another off-topic question for you cichlid people that I know are on this forum (sorry....well, Malawi cichlids are a lot like reef fish in some ways, so maybe this is not really really far off topic):
I'm debating whether or not to set up the sump that goes with the 180 cichlid tank (formerly a reef tank) I am setting up. The sump was designed to hook up to a skimmer, which obviously I will not be using, so that gets rid of one of the major reasons one might want a sump.
Convince me that I should either set up this sump, or alternatively not bother.
I've never used a sump on a freshwater tank before. I can see some advantages though:
1. It could serve as a sediment trap (as a settling chamber) and/or could be set up with some sort of
mechanical filtration media. (The tank otherwise is going to be filtered using several very large sponge filters (hidden behind rocks) powered by air from my large linear piston pump that supplies air to all the tanks in the basement (I have lots and lots of air available!).
2. I could fill some of the chambers with bioballs or something for added
biological filtration.
3. It would make us feel cool (everyone knows that really cool tanks have sumps!).
4. It would give me something to do with those holes in the bottom of the tank that I would otherwise simply plug up.
On the other hand:
1. It could increase anxiety over the ulikely possibility of the overflow clogging and the basement getting flooded.
2. I might tend to lose food through the overflow that would then just go down to the sump and rot (of course, I could have Malaysian livebearing snails and/or the small red (or brown) ramshorn snails down there, which seems almost essential in fact to deal with the misplaced food, but the snails might tend to get into the pump and jam the impeller.
3. It would increase my electric bill by causing me to run an additional pump.
I'm leaning toward using the sump, but I'd appreciate any arguments pro or con.
