Help with crud in the bottom of my sump

[guilford]

My new tank has been running for a while now, and I have a thin layer of silt/crud in the bottom of my sump. I was going to drain the sump to clean it out last night, and then I thought maybe I should post here first in case someone had a different way to clean it out that would be less of a hassle. So, any ideas, or is draining the sump the way to go?

Also, is this why people use filter socks? I just have the overflow from my tank emptying directly into the sump, and maybe that's where all of this crud is coming from. Is a filter sock over the drain from the tank likely to catch a bunch of this stuff and keep it from settling in the sump, so then I would just have to swap out the sock and not deal with cleaning the entire sump?

Thanks,
Brad

 

[cee]

About every 5th or 6th water change I clean my sump. I use a power head with a short piece of hose attached to the intake side to do it. On the output side, a hose into a bucket. Put it in the sump, turn it on, and move it around to suck the crud up. HTH.

Dave

 

[fishdoc11]

I siphon out my sump every time I do a water change which is ~ every 2 weeks. I just use a "skinny" hose with no bell on the end like a typical siphon. I also put a filter sock on the drain line and blow off the live rock in the tank with a powerhead. This keeps detritus down quite a bit but you will allways have some. Leaving a filter sock on for more than a couple of days is a bad idea IME. Detritius, food etc...in a filter sock seems to beak down much faster due to the increased flow over it IME.
hth, Chris

 

[ct_vol]

If you use a filter sock, I would not use one too fine... I used a 5 micron sock and it quickly clogged... Unfortunately for me, the way I had it on there, after it clogged, it started overflowing outside of the sump a little bit... So I had a wet floor... Not a flood mind you, but probably about a gallon by the time I became aware of the situation... I know a lot of people use 100 micron...

I currently don't use a filter sock... After looking into the other sock, you catch all kinds of amphipods and whatnot, that I figured were best in the tank for my fish/corals to eat...

My current solution for the "silt" buildup is that I have a MJ 1200 in the largest chamber of my sump... It keeps the circulation going in there, and doesn't give it a chance to settle, this way the skimmer can suck all the sludge out... I do still get a little build up in another compartment, but I just blow it out with a MJ before I do a water change...

And I'm still dying to see pics Brad... lol Hope this helps...

 

[seased]

I use one of those plastic hand pumps you use to transfer kerosene from a container. They sell them at HD and Lowes for a few dollars. HTH

 

[rsteagall]

A couple of days ago I cleaned my sump out with a couple of powerheads and sponge filers on the intake. Of course I turned off the return while I was doing this. It worked very well and quickly without actually taking any water out. What the power head didn't remove via the sponge filter, the skimmer removed pretty quickly. The two power heads created so much circulation and flow, I basically just put them in the sump without doing anything else