It finally happened to me!! Also, a question...

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.

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I considered it, but I'd have to drill to do that as I only have two holes. Also I don't know if corner flow would fit another hole.

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Not 100% sure I understand your question but if you have a sump with 15gallons of water and no biological filtration (rock, other porous media) in the sump then I don’t think it will affect your bioload much. 70 lbs of rock in the display with a ‘couple fish’ seems like plenty of biological filtration provided it is good rock.
 
Not 100% sure I understand your question but if you have a sump with 15gallons of water and no biological filtration (rock, other porous media) in the sump then I don't think it will affect your bioload much. 70 lbs of rock in the display with a "˜couple fish' seems like plenty of biological filtration provided it is good rock.
Thanks that's exactly what I was asking. I didn't know if some of the biological load would be bonded to the glass & was enough to throw it off or something.

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Thanks that's exactly what I was asking. I didn't know if some of the biological load would be bonded to the glass & was enough to throw it off or something.

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No not unless your sump is jam packed with sponges and the like and they are filtering the water. Glass is non porous so the glass itself shouldnt be housing much bacteria.

As far as water movement with no return pump that is likely going to be less.

And obviously anything that was in your sump like a skimmer being offline isn't going to help with nutrients so you might consider water changes if you are concerned with water quality/nutrients.
 
No not unless your sump is jam packed with sponges and the like and they are filtering the water. Glass is non porous so the glass itself shouldnt be housing much bacteria.



As far as water movement with no return pump that is likely going to be less.



And obviously anything that was in your sump like a skimmer being offline isn't going to help with nutrients so you might consider water changes if you are concerned with water quality/nutrients.
Than you for that! Yeah I assumed so but I also have made mistakes assuming things before so I went to the community for input. I already planned on increasing to smallwr wc a few days a week.

It's only skimmer & reactors in the sump. I'm not overly concerned about params as it's only fish at the moment but I would like to keep them less stressed. I have a fx250 moving water in the main tank and moved a heater up there for the time being. I may throw my emperor 400 from an old tank on there if things get out of hand while I re plumb the sump updates.

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The other thing would be salinity. Hopefully you have a way to keep the tank topped off fairly frequently to keep the fish from going through large salinity swings, which could stress them.
 
The other thing would be salinity. Hopefully you have a way to keep the tank topped off fairly frequently to keep the fish from going through large salinity swings, which could stress them.
Yep! Rodi in basement kept in a brute. I never had an ato so I do daily level additions anyway

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After the snail in the bulkhead happened to me I made some guards out of flexible gutter guard


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