Should I remove LR from sump as part of maintenance

[jrosenblum]

Wise people,

I have a 59 Gallon with 6 seahorses, 2 cardinals, large CUC and a few corals. Filtration consists of about 55 lbs. of live rock in the display, about 5 lbs. in the sump, a protein skimmer, purigen and chemipure.

The LR in the sump is essentially large ruble-sized, the water flows through a filter pad -> purigen -> chemipure -> LR -> skimmer -> return.

My questions:
1) Should I take the LR out as part of maintenance and vacuum out the sump or leave it undisturbed. I know about LR cultivating anaerobic, denitrifying bacteria, so would I be disturbing the anaerobic environment by taking the LR out.

2) Should I even have LR in the sump or is it adding relatively little, I could remove it and convert the space to grow chaeto... or something else?

If anyone wants to comment on my set-up in general (help me be a better gardener), that would be appreciated as well. For what its worth, I was having trouble keeping Nitrates down below 15 PPM which is why I added the chemipure and (eventually) the purigen. With those additions, Nitrates are about 5 or below but never below about 2. Even though I target feed the horses, they require a lot of food and are sloppy eaters.

Thanks

 

[sn4k33y3z]

Following along.

I would imagine you could use a turkey baster to blow off any built up detritus that may have accumulated on your LR.

 

[heathlindner25]

me personally I would probably take it out ,gravel vacuum the bottom every 6 months or so... but that's just me I'm pretty OCD.

 

[sn4k33y3z]

I suggest whatever Heath suggests LOL

 

[jrosenblum]

Thanks for the feedback. I cannot help but wonder if it is doing any good at all. I'm thinking about dumping the rubble in the sump and converting that chamber to refugium for macro algae, pods and such.

 

[ralph atl]

My sump consists of a mesh filter sock, pumps, and skimmer...

I wetvac sump clean every week or two with a lowes wetvac buckethead.

Nothing in there that could collect detrius...

 

[rhyerob]

Bi-monthly I take out the rocks in my sump and rinse them. I put a full 5 gal bucket in a 55 gallon drum and violently dip it in and out. When the water gets too dirty I refill. At the same time I vacuum all the crap off the bottom of my 100gal Rubbermaid sump. My philosophy is to make water changes as dirty as possible. Helped Eliminate alot of my issues

 

[rhyerob]

Bi- monthly sounds like I do it twice a month. I meant to say every other two-three months

 

[jrosenblum]

Rhyerob;883957 wrote: Bi-monthly I take out the rocks in my sump and rinse them. I put a full 5 gal bucket in a 55 gallon drum and violently dip it in and out. When the water gets too dirty I refill. At the same time I vacuum all the crap off the bottom of my 100gal Rubbermaid sump. My philosophy is to make water changes as dirty as possible. Helped Eliminate alot of my issues

Do you use salt water or RO/DI to rinse the rocks?