Well as I said in my original post I had ordered a trigger 30" sump from Reefsupplies.ca and was excited to get it installed and to replace the crappy wet/dry filter I'd been using. (Throwback to the freshwater tank)
I received it last Friday; right before the long weekend which gave me tons of time to get it set up and working the way I wanted. I was pretty concerned about the condition of the acrylic sump after shipping and was very happy that the packaging managed to protect it very well during its journey from QC to me in AB. Nothing so much as a scratch on it when I unpacked it.
The material the Trigger sump is made out of is probably close to twice as thick as the eShoppe ones I've seen in person. It is Euro-braced around the whole top edge for strength and this also gives a great attachment point for things like a refugium light, probe holder, ATO line, etc.
They include one filter sock which did an excellent job of filtering and getting really gross over the weekend. I suspect that my filter floss wasn't doing quite as thorough a job as I thought. The mount the sock goes into is cut from acrylic and is glued into place, but I don't anticipate any problems as it is pretty beefy, thicker than the sump itself.
The sump is a typical three compartment filter with enough room in chamber 1 for my large Tunze 9016 skimmer. What a difference in terms of water clarity moving the skimmer to the sump has made. No more bubbles and the large footprint it took was quickly taken over by my yellow tang as "his". In chamber two you have your refugium and despite the large amount of flow the sump is capable of it remains undisturbed and yet the water is moving through it. I had some left over sand so I put about 2cm in the bottom along with about 1kg of rubble. I've also put a purple grape macro and some balls of chaeto in it with the hopes of one day finding some dragons breath to grow out in there. I also bought a bottle of live tiger pods which almost certainly flowed right into my main display a couple minutes after adding it to my sump lol. Lesson learned
Chamber three is for the return pumps, I also have my GFO/GAC reactor drawing water from there. I have just enough room for both pumps and MAYBE a small third one. Who cares, the action is in the refugium.
Setting it all up took next to no time, although moving the skimmer, probes, pump lines, etc. took a few hours all told. There's even a section to put media like bio-balls, GAC etc. that I'm running a bag of cuprisorb and a bag of purigen in. I moved probably a quarter of the bio-balls I had to the return chamber just so I could ensure that my live rock would pick up the slack. So far things are going extremely well.
At the end of the day it is easy to recommend this sump based on features, build quality, and function. It is cheaper than a similarly sized and spec'd CPR sump and is way better quality than the eshopps. If you want a slightly larger and more flashy sump you could look for the ruby line (exactly the same design as the standard sump but with red acrylic vs. clear around the Euro brace, dual intakes and slightly higher volume.) or the elite series that have a much larger refugium. Based on my needs this is a top notch sump and if I had to buy again I would go with the Trigger.