First off, note that a trickle filter is actually a class of sump. All a sump is, is a container located either above or below the main display tank, that holds additional volume and allows you somewhere to place equipment out of view. There isn't anything special or magical about it.

Trickle filters aren't bad either. It is through mythformation that it has come out that way. Someone says something, someone reads it, inteprets it differently or doens't understand what as said, is repeated again in a different guise and so on. Just like a "Chinese whisper".

You may have read that trickle filters are bad and act like a "nitrate factory", causing high nitrates in an aquarium. This simply is not the case! A trickle filter will not cause high nitrate levels by churning out nitrates. However, what they do do, they do well. And that is converting ammonia/nirite to nitrate.

The reason that you don't need a trickle filter is the fact that every surface in the tank that is exposed to the water does the same thing. Including plumbing, glass, sand, rock etc. So you have a huge surface area within the tank on the liverock and sand that will do exactly the same job whether the trickle filter is attached or not. So there is simply no need to have one connected.

What trickle filters don't do is have a region where denitrification can occur, which is the conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gas. This is because all of a trickle filter's surface area is well oxygenated, and denitrification has to happen in the absence of oxygen. However, liverock and deep sand beds do have regions of low oxygen levels in which denitrification can occur. So that is those are are a preferred method of biological filtration to a trickle filter.

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