STLTim
Member
tl;Dr; - aquarium almost flooded due to snail in plumbing, had to take it all apart. While rebuilding I was curious if anyone thinks a deep clean of the sump will harm the bio load too much?
I've seen the stories, a snail climbs into the overflow and clogs the pipe... I always thought "nah, that won't happen to me"
After 6 years and 4 days, it happened. Last Wednesday I was working on my computer next to the system. There is a durso overflow and it was making a lot more gurgling noise than before. I suddenly hear a "clunk" noise and turn around and see the water rising in the dt. I quickly turned off the return pump and immediately thought, ah snap there is probably a snail clogged in there.
It was still alive... But I knew it probably would take forever to climb back out or would die before that happened so I began disconnecting the plumbing thinking unions would have been great right about now. 3 hours later messing with the tight space under the sump and breaking the bulkheads accidently, at 1 am, the snail was out after a little persuasion from me. It is still alive and happily climbing walls again.
Anyway, I'm going to switch to a Herbie overflow and while I have everything apart was going to deep clean the sump. I'm curious if anyone has opinions on the bio load impact this may have. Should I do it or leave and just do normal cleaning of vermenred snails, calcium buildup, etc?
The DT is a 93 cube there's about 70lb rock and a couple fish at the moment, no coral. (I'm recovering from a neglect period due to kid activities and my laziness). The sump is a standard 20g I ghetto-rigged to work. It probably keeps about 15gal of water and the overflow is roughly 3-4 gallons which I also am going to scrape and clean since it's now dry.
Sorry it's so long, I had to share with someone who appreciates the reason why we sometimes don't sleep at night.
Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk
I've seen the stories, a snail climbs into the overflow and clogs the pipe... I always thought "nah, that won't happen to me"
After 6 years and 4 days, it happened. Last Wednesday I was working on my computer next to the system. There is a durso overflow and it was making a lot more gurgling noise than before. I suddenly hear a "clunk" noise and turn around and see the water rising in the dt. I quickly turned off the return pump and immediately thought, ah snap there is probably a snail clogged in there.
It was still alive... But I knew it probably would take forever to climb back out or would die before that happened so I began disconnecting the plumbing thinking unions would have been great right about now. 3 hours later messing with the tight space under the sump and breaking the bulkheads accidently, at 1 am, the snail was out after a little persuasion from me. It is still alive and happily climbing walls again.
Anyway, I'm going to switch to a Herbie overflow and while I have everything apart was going to deep clean the sump. I'm curious if anyone has opinions on the bio load impact this may have. Should I do it or leave and just do normal cleaning of vermenred snails, calcium buildup, etc?
The DT is a 93 cube there's about 70lb rock and a couple fish at the moment, no coral. (I'm recovering from a neglect period due to kid activities and my laziness). The sump is a standard 20g I ghetto-rigged to work. It probably keeps about 15gal of water and the overflow is roughly 3-4 gallons which I also am going to scrape and clean since it's now dry.
Sorry it's so long, I had to share with someone who appreciates the reason why we sometimes don't sleep at night.
Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk
