I'm going to start this post by being 100% honest. I do not like maintenance. I DO NOT LIKE MAINTENANCE! I'm not one of those guys that enjoys spending two or three hours a week cleaning my tank. Having said that, I had to make some effort to clean out my sump as all of the junk in it keeps clogging up my return pump. After about an hour and having to empty my wet dry vac, which was a pain in the butt by the way, my sump is still nasty, lol. What do you guys do to keep it looking halfway decent? Or do you bother cleaning it at all and possibly just throw some snails and crabs in there? Also, how do you keep bits and pieces of your chaeto from finding their way into the return section ?
Sump cleaning
- Thread starter Dmac
- Start date
Do you run filter socks or anything like that?
Sometimes. But I have a tendency to not change them often enough because.....I hate maintenance. I know, I got in the wrong hobby. I might be able to persuade myself to change them regularly if I can eliminate most other maintenance on my sump.
Try this I hate messing with filter socks as well so I got the filter cups and I just throw some poly floss in there. It's much simpler to just glance in and check to see if the water is still going down or not. If it is starting to get clogged I throw the old stuff in the trash and grab a handful more and stuff it and then go about my day. Takes all of a min or 2.
It helps a pretty good amount. I actually took it a step further. I put the marine pure balls in the cups then put the floss on top of that. I filled the cup about 3/4 the way with the balls. then added the floss. So the amount of floss I lose isn't very much. I just started doing that for about a 2 months and it is keeping it very clean so far.
How much crap do you have in your tank and what is it? I have the occasional sponge growing, but that's it.
I just switched over to a FOWLR but before that I was doing it wiht my reef tank as well. I have about 8 big fish that are pretty dang messy, It is a 200g tank.
I give it a light scrub whenever I do a water change (maybe once a month or once every two months) and then siphon things out that go directly to the backyard
Crabs, snails, stars, anything that cleans goes in my sump. I scrap the walls down when they get nasty at a water change. Usually I start with the sump on that change and level the water out in there when done. Any left over water does a smaller display change.
I don't run socks or any mechanical filtration other than the skimmer. I just stir everything up with a small pump or turkey baster for a few minutes every few nights. Detritus is great coral food, why waste it.
I don't run socks or any mechanical filtration other than the skimmer. I just stir everything up with a small pump or turkey baster for a few minutes every few nights. Detritus is great coral food, why waste it.
