anyone actually clean their sumps?

giants4pc · #1 07/31/2007, 09:50 AM

I'm borrowing a friend's wet/dry and thought I might give it a try. It's a 75 with 3 areas...a fuge, a return section, and a skimmer section. The return especially is covered in coraline and some other hard algae. The fuge obviously has some detritus but I'm sure it's full of pods as well. Anyone clean this or why bother?

waldomas · #2 07/31/2007, 09:53 AM

When I do a water change, I vacuum out the sump with a shop vac. I bought this vacuum solely for this purpose.

Paulairduck · #3 07/31/2007, 10:14 AM

I clean my sump, once a month, it keeps the dirt and whatever else is in there out of my pumps.

blmeier7 · #4 07/31/2007, 10:58 AM

I also siphon my sump about once a month.

A couple of months ago I gave my fuge a thorough cleaning by vacuuming the sand really well and I took out the rubble rock and literally boiled it on the stove for 30 min to kill off the unwanted algae.

lazaro torres · #5 07/31/2007, 12:00 PM

once a week when I do water changes.

Serioussnaps · #6 07/31/2007, 12:09 PM

I use rubbermaids for my sumps and switch them out. Recently I started running filter socks. You would be amazed at the amount of CRAP that settles in your sump.

Cinderblock · #7 07/31/2007, 03:32 PM

I cleaned mine for the first time since I set my tank up 7 months ago. There was some nasty stuff on the bottom and it gave me a chance to clean the pumps and inside and outside of my protein skimmer.

chromafi · #8 07/31/2007, 04:48 PM

Yeah waldomas, a shop vac is the way to go.
I pump the water out of my sump, and then vacuum the bottom to get all the detritus.

RCS · #9 07/31/2007, 09:49 PM

If I had a true sump I'd clean it out...as it is, I've only really got a 50g refugium and it pretty much cleans itself. Little to no algae (even with 24 hours lighting) and a whole lot of life in there...cleaning it out like you folks do would get rid of most of the microfauna in my system!

NanoManMaster · #10 08/01/2007, 08:22 AM

I use 25 micron filter socks that i change every 3 days so my sump stays clean i dont need to clean at all

JB NY · #11 08/01/2007, 09:10 AM

Every water change (so weekly) I clean out the sump. I siphon out the detritius and using a sponge wipe down the inside of the sump.

Wiskey · #12 08/01/2007, 11:42 AM

I clean the detritus out of my sump about monthly,.. the pump I use for water changes has a little peice of pipe on it and I use that to vac all the detritus off the bottom.

Whiskey

bugitup · #13 08/01/2007, 12:29 PM

mosdef!

flyyyguy · #14 08/01/2007, 02:08 PM

EVery water change I take my shop vac and quickly suck out anything that may have settled.

I include my overflow boxes in this rouotine. It only takes a few seconds

reefman77 · #15 08/01/2007, 03:03 PM

i havnt cleaned mine since I switched to bare bottom. I think i will probably clean it saturday when I do my weekly water change. does anyone put powerheads in there sump to keep things from settling?

docwells · #16 08/01/2007, 03:28 PM

Finally got around to cleaning the sump today. All I can say is it was way overdue. It was pretty nasty and now it is sparkling clean. Pretty sure tank inhabitants appreciate the cleaning.

Dejavu · #17 08/01/2007, 03:56 PM

Every week when i do a water change i'll siphon out all the detritius.

Bebo77 · #18 08/01/2007, 04:00 PM

i try and wipe it down every month....

teen · #19 08/01/2007, 05:20 PM

my tank water definetly looks cleaner after cleaning out the sump and doing a water change, opposed to just doing a water change.

i try and clean my sump out whenever i notice theres detritus building up.

TIMMYE · #20 08/02/2007, 07:49 PM

I clean my whole undetank area includiung the sump once a month. For the sump I clean this with a vac and scrub down all the walls. I also celan all the salt creep/spray that gets all over.

jeffbrig · #21 08/02/2007, 09:26 PM

I haven't cleaned my sump in 2+ years since setting up the tank. It's a bare bottom system, and I my return pump moves about 2000gph through the sump, so it's a pretty strong flow through there. There's quite a bit of sponge and small fan worms growing on the sides and all of the equipment that's in there.

I do scrape the walls of the refugium compartment when the coralline gets so thick I can no longer see inside.

capn_hylinur · #22 08/02/2007, 09:32 PM

a shop vac---what a great tip--thanks guys--I been doing the power head thing but that's always problematic with me for creating a mess

I keep live rock in the sump under the filter soak--it is always leaving alot of detrius on the bottom so I try to clean it out once a month--but with a shop vacuum this will be ideal.