At the Aquatic Experience in Chicago last weekend we were drawn to Custom Aquariums’ booth by the novel Siphon Stopper and H2Overflow plumbing parts, but we stayed to examine their new Seamless Sumps. Custom Aquariums might be the first company to ever offer an aquarium sump that is made from custom molded polyethylene.
The Seamless Sump concept is built from three different modules, a Sock Tub for the incoming water and mechanical pre-filtration, a Baffle Tub where secondary filtration can be customized to your heart’s content and where the actual “sump” area begins, and a Reservoir Tub that can be used for top off, additional sump reservoir, or even a refugium.
The sock tub is necessarily tall to accomodate tall filter socks and the clearance for the spillway to flow into them with the overall unit being 25 inches tall and just under a seven by eight inch footprint. Meanwhile the baffle tub and reservoir tub are both roughly the same dimensions with a footprint of 16 by 21 inches.
As far as new sumps go, the Seamless Sumps are a stark departure from the normal acrylic sumps that dominate the aquarium landscape by being polyethylene but this imparts on them a lot of interesting features. For starters, one of our first questions about the Seamless Sumps was for permission to kick it, as in to kick one that was set up and running with flowing water and it took the hit in stride as we knew it would – polyethylene is moderately flexible so it can’t crack and since these tubs are molded from a single piece, there’s no “seam” to fail at all.
Another neat feature of the Seamless Sumps is that due to their modular nature, you can easily fit them piecemeal into your aquarium’s stand – good luck doing that with a 3 meter dreambox without an also-custom made steel or otherwise metal stand. The Seamless Sump already has pre-made divots at equal heights on each of the three modules for easy drilling of holes to link them up with plumbing.
Some other nice touches to the poly tubs of the Seamless Sumps is their tight fitting lids which rest in a kind of ‘well’ which directs all water back into the tub. Additionally there’s predrilled holes for both drains and returns to minimize evaporation and noise. Couple all these features and the ability to go bananas customizing these things and you’ve really got yourself a durable, affordable sump which still provide a slew of features and versatility while still leaving you some money in the bank to afford fish and corals.
We could go on and on about how much you can do with the Seamless Sumps but you really ought to check out the customization page for yourself – you’ll be flabbergasted to discover that the basic baffle tub, a decent small standalone sump on its own starts at a ludicrously low $169.95! From there you can add more modules and features and configure any number of tubs to really fit your particular application.
If value, versatility and durability are high priorities for your next aquarium sump project, Custom Aquariums is on to something with their aquarium filtration approach and you owe it to yourself to check out the Seamless Sump concept. [Custom Aquariums]
