Live rock in sump

[boosted chemist]

I got a 20l with a 15 gal sump including about 7 gal refuge. I have prob 20lbs in the display and 5ish in the sump. Now when i go to clean the fuge, its a ***** with all the detrius in there. If i removed the LR and just kept the cheato for ease of cleaning, would this drastically hurt my tank?

Only have a manderine and a clown fish, so my bio load is not crazy.


TIA

 

[wetbehindears]

I would leave it u need rock and sand for ur pod population for the mandarin. Jmo stack the rock to benefit ur cleaning so its easier

 

[450reef]

try building a rack out of pvc to set ur rocks on

 

[tmz]

You'd be reducing your rock by 25% and your nitirfying/ denitrifying bacteria along with it. If you choose to remove it taking it out a pound or two at at time,every few days would give the rest of your biofilter time to adjust.

 

[boosted chemist]

These are all good ideas, i will do it slowly, and if anyone is concerned about the manderine, he is also frozen trained. not to mention when i dont scrape the glass, the amount of pods is insane.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

imo/ime

imo/ime

more important than the presence or not of rock in your sump is the accumulation of detritus in a sump. Mulm and detritus down there isn't a good thing so whatever you choose to do with the rock don't let the sump become a cesspool- especially if you want to grow Acropora.

 

[mr.maroonsalty]

Sumps can become nasty; its important keeping them clean. I'm trying to use a 4" sb in my fuge under things, but not sure if its the right thing to do. I couldn't ditch all the critters in my sandbed when I went bb and had to put it somewhere. I use a cheap dedicated small shopvac that fits on a bucket and quickly sucks the crude out so the lr isn't out of water very long.

 

[alphaferret]

do you have a sand bed? If not then I would suggest a small ph to keep the detritus in the water column, blowing at the bottom of the sump. Works for me.

 

[tmz]

Cleaning it out is a very good thing.It's not just the detritus that messes things up. The algae puts out exudate and contributes to organic carbon buildup. I find growing macro algae over sand really messy . I do keep rock under mine just because I need to keep the rock somewhere and I'm out of room and it keeps the chaeto closer to the surface. Cleaning isn't nearly as bad as when I kept it over sand.

 

[boosted chemist]

No sand bed its too small to do that imo. So I cut my cheato in half (huge ball) and pulled a pound of smaller rubble pieces along with moving the larger ones to the back. Five gal change and basically emptied the sump along with detrius. I'm thinking of building a reverse durso into my sump to cut back on creep down there, along with fabbing up a filter floss holder. The small filter socks are too much a pain to clean and swap.

 

[tmz]

Larger pieces of rock trap a lot less detritus than a rubble pile which can get almost as messy as sand.ime.