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Basically, the point of a sump is to add water volume. For example, if you had a 30 gallon sump with your 55 gallon aquarium, you'd have 85 gallons of water in your system, and you could accordingly stock higher.

Additionally, you can keep things in the sump that you may not want to keep in the aquarium for a particular reason. For example, if you don't like the look of hornwort but you want its ability to remove nitrate, you could throw a bunch of it into the sump and your tank stays pretty.

The sump is plumbed into your main tank. Here's a picture of a tank/sump system. The sump is the small tank on the bottom. You can see the clear tubing going down to it.

Sumps are pretty rare in FW systems. It's much more of a salty's domain.

Hope that helps.

I always had internal filters in my fresh and never thought anything of it. I then moved up to marine and opted for the sump system. Now I have sumps on my fresh as well as marines and wouldn't go back unless space limited it.

The added volume is obviously a great thing and the amount of space within the tank itself - as previously stated, you don't have to 'hide' things. For me, however, the best thing is you can do all the maintainence (water change/ medication/ extra filtration/ segregation of sick or fry etc without disturbing the main display.

Currently have 3 sump systems at home - 5ft marine, 5ft SA cichlid fresh and 3ft community fresh and I honestly find its easier and quicker than working on the one 'traditional' internal filtration tank.