I need some help converting a wet/dry filter into a sump; any ideas????

[steri]

I recently bought a house, and along with the house came a 210 gallon tank. Now, I have been in the hobby for a number of years, but this is something I have not faced yet. The tank is a FO tank. I am in the process of adding LR to the tank, but my eventual goal is to make the tank a reef (which is what I am used to having). The biggest obsticle I see is this nasty wet/dry system beneath the tank. Now, the filter was custom built into the stand, so removing the entire wet/dry is not an option. The top section does come out. The wet/dry main tank goes about 4-6 inches below the bottom of the stand. Here is a couple of pics to help you get an idea as to what I am looking at:

Whole wet/dry system


left side (with an ETSS skimmer that I added to the sump)


Right side of the filter:


Just to note, yes that is a huge UV sterilyzer in front of the wet/dry. I have unplugged it and don't plan to continue using it.

The wet dry has 2 water sources that are hooked into 2 seperate 12 inch by 12 inch plastic tops that make up the right side of the filter. That then flows into the media, which then flows through open eggcrate into about 6 inches of open water; which is then sent through return pumps on the left side of the system (which is also where I have put the skimmer, but that is easily moveable).

Clearly, I wil need to take out the media. I get that, and do not see any issue with doing that. My plan was to take out the media and replace it with live rock. I could put live rock both fully submersed in water and partially out of the water, but is that something even worth considering?

Also based on what you see, if I were to build compartments to the sump, how would i go about making the sources to the sump dump water into only the far right side of the system, instead of over the middle and over the right side as it is shown?

If I can convert both of those sources into one source, could I make the middle into a refugium, or would that be hard based on what you see? The dimensions of the main sump of the wet/dry is 40 x 14. There are 4 "legs" that are glued to the sides of the sump that act as a stand for the top compartment.

I hope I have given enough info about the wet/dry. I have ideas, but have no clue how to turn them into reality. Any insight and/or information would be greatly appreciated. I want this tank to be a reef, but I know I need to fix this sump if I plan to make that happen.

[viggen]

The only issue I see with going directly to a reef tank is if copper has ever been dosed. Not sure how long the rock/substrate in the tank can hold onto copper but that's deadly for the inverts.

Possiblt the easiest way to do this is to setup a 150g or so rubbermaid temporary tank & use the existing wet/dry to keep the fish happy in there. Then you can do whatever you want to your main tank with setting up a fuge properly & all that stuff.

On my tank I installed a sump which ended up cracking on me. Since it wouldn't slide out between the stands legs though the front I took a dremmel to the sump to get it out so I didn't have to move the tank.

IF you don't want to remove the sump & can't relocate the fish probably have to remove one of those rolls of filter stuff (haven't seen those for 10+ years) & after a few weeks remove another.... then the bioballs slowly all while adding the LR. Again that's if there is no copper in the tank.

Nothing wrong with using the UV..... it helps with reducing algae growth

[steri]

The guy I bought the house from paid someone to take care of the tank on a monthly basis. I called the guy who took care of the tank, and he said copper had not been used on the tank, and that the setup was over 6 years old.

I really do not want to remove the sump and relocate the fish. I bought some acrylic today along with some other supplies from Home Depot. I will take one of the rolls out tonight, and plan to take the other one out sometime next week to give the tank a chance to adjust. I do have over 100 pounds of LR in the tank now which should help and another 70 on the way from my old tank.

After I get the rolls out, I will look into how to build compartments in the main sump. I think that will be my biggest challenge. If anyone has ideas for that, I am open to suggesstion.