Cali Kid Corals

Cleaning your sump!

Vincerama2

Vincerama2

Supporting Member
BARcard
I was looking to see how to plumb my new algae turf scrubber, so I removed some rocks from my sump, which I typically ignore, and to see inside, I scraped the crap off the walls of the sump. As I reached the bottom rocks, I felt ... 2 inches of much. Not sand, not rubble, but actual MUD.

Wow. I'd been letting my daughter feed the fish and she likes to keep them happy (but now they all died) and I think that years of overfeeding and pooing have left this unseen layer at the bottom of the sump. Well no wonder my nitrates are quite high! (I mean aside from the feeding).

I broke out my HD bucked head" vacuum, but I think I'm actually going to open the front door, snake a long hose out and siphon the crap into a bucket if I can.It's amazing.

IMG_2549.jpg


Amazing what you find when you turn the lights on...

V
 

Attachments

  • IMG_2549.jpg
    IMG_2549.jpg
    82.4 KB · Views: 198
I had a similar thing when I moved my last tank, although no high nitrates to go along with it (I had to dose them in that tank). Was definitely surprising. Also pulled out almost a 5 gallon bucket of those little white feather dusters that were growing in it.
 
jccaclimber said:
I had a similar thing when I moved my last tank, although no high nitrates to go along with it (I had to dose them in that tank). Was definitely surprising. Also pulled out almost a 5 gallon bucket of those little white feather dusters that were growing in it.
Click to expand...
Those lil feather dusters have been destroying my Hammers. Theyre oretty invasive.
 
Well, i have hundreds and hundreds of them and it seems like they just encroach and irritate the polyps. But, it could be that it just appears that they are doing that to the hammers and it is something else that I am not aware of...like the sponges.
 
I reconfigured my sump recently to relocated the return for my 5G frag bucket. Stirred up some much gunk, my water was completely opaque... irritated a lot of things as a consequence and probably was why a few of my sps went rtn...

Really should make a habit of cleaning the sump once in a while myself
 
Siphoning out the front door was hit and miss. THe problem is a small rock or shell fragmetn would get jammed in the hose and bring the whole thing to a stop and it was hard getting the siphon going fast enough to pull air out of the high points. I'm just going to manually reverse-turkey baster that stuff out of the tank a little at a time.

The siphoning effort also kicked up a dust storm and half that crap is now distributed on the rocks of the display tank. Fail!

V
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top