Cleaning overflow

[Village Idiot]

Well, I FINALLY made my first big step to starting my 1st SW tank -- picked up a used Oceanic 90 RR on Craigslist. The overflow has tons of what looks like dried green hair algae on the inside of it. I scraped off what I could reach, but I'm sure there is some more left. I'm worried that once water hits the tank again and the lights come back on, the hair algae will take off again. Should I try to disinfect the overflow with a 10% bleach solution, or just don't worry about it?

 

[sir_dudeguy]

Use vinegar or citric acid. If you can, get it to soak in the vinegar for about a half hour or so and get one of those pipe cleaner things and try to get it out after it soaks. Trust me, it WILL slow down the overflow...i just found that out last week the hard way lol. I was gone for like 20 minutes and when i came back my sump was almost dry and the return pump had pushed out more water than the overflow could pull out because i had never cleaned the U-Tube part of it.