The Eshopps Cube Nano Refugium was announced at the beginning of this year but this weekend at Reefapalooza New York was our first opportunity to see one in action. The product shots looked really great, as they usually tend to do, but seeing the Eshopps Cube Nano Refugium fully equipped with the eshopps curve nano led light and an appropriately sized cone protein skimmer was quite impressive.
This particular smallish sump from Eshopps with cubic dimensions uses a unique method of directing water to the right sections of the sump, in the right order, using what is called the Eshopps Channel Design. This layout enables the Cube Nano Refugium to pack in a ton of functionality into such a small space, that calling it “nano” almost takes away from how feature rich this sump is.
Usually when an aquarium product is called “nano”, this simply means that the manufacturer has taken something tried and true and miniaturized it for use on smaller aquariums. It really doesn’t feel that way with the Eshopps Cube Refugium Nano, it just looks like the whole thing makes very efficient use of space, while not skimping out on the top-end features that users come to expect.
The Eshopps Cube Nano Refugium has a flooded spillway to reduce noise from the water draining into the tank, that spills over into a nice mechanical filter sock insert, and then gets distributed to both the built in protein skimmer section and the diminutive refugium before channeling water to the return pump section of the sump. A refugium that size (or any for that matter) are of questionable usefulness but you could still grow a nice spinning ball of Chaetomorpha for noticeable nutrient export and microfauna refuge.
What strikes us about the Cube Nano Refugium is that is rated for up to a 35 gallon tank but we can remember a time when similarly sized sumps would be running a 55 gallon or larger “mini reef” aquarium. The only real limiting factor is the amount of volume in the return pump section of the sump to accomodate how much water might drain into it during a power interruption.
Priced at $199 and with all these features in tow, the Eshopps’ innovative new Cube Nano Refugium easily shoots to the top of the shortlist of sumps to consider for smaller systems. And if you have a cube shaped aquarium with a square footprint, you can’t really do much better than this specially designed sump. [Eshopps]
