Should I clean sump?

[Jmunk]

There's a ton of detritus and brown gunk collecting in my sump. Is there any reason I shouldn't just take a shopvac and clean it up? Do you guys do this? I haven't touched my sump in the almost two years it's been running.

 

[D-Nak]

I use a my wet/dry vac to clean my sump probably every six months.

 

[rffanat1c]

I clean mine every two weeks

 

[Ron Reefman]

I believe it was Randy Holmes Farley who stated he never vacs the detritus out of the sump. I don't either.

 

[toothybugs]

I suck mine out every 2-3 weeks. Hook a small hose up to my skimmer inlet and let er rip. It sparkles.

 

[C.Eymann]

I use a my wet/dry vac to clean my sump probably every six months.

+1. being a bb sps tank keeper, I'm a trained detritus hunter. having piles of gunk anywhere in the system is a no no in my book.

 

[DubiousMaximus]

One of the reasons a sump was important was the collection of settled detritus & other funk. Leaving it to decompose adds more organics to the water

 

[Ron Reefman]

One of the reasons a sump was important was the collection of settled detritus & other funk. Leaving it to decompose adds more organics to the water

Are you saying that is a good thing or a bad thing?

 

[DubiousMaximus]

Id clean it up, its the main purpose of a sump; to allow detritus to settle out of the water column so it can be removed. The rest that floats around was the reason why we use skimmers

 

[Waters40]

I also clean mine every so often. Most of our filtration (skimmers, socks, etc.) are designed to remove detritus and organics....why leave it sit on the bottom of your sump to decompose and reduce water quality?

 

[MelloW33]

Definitely remove it

 

[greaps]

Remove it, that bucket style mini shop vac is a must have item for this.
It takes roughly 1-2 minutes to clean my sump with it and one more minute to empty the shop vac and put it away.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

I use a my wet/dry vac to clean my sump probably every six months.

This is what I do. Then with every water change I pull out some of the GHA that is growing in there so it kind of works like an algae scrubber. I let the GHA and even Cyano grow in the sump if it wants to. This keeps it out of my DT. I also run my sump light 24/7

 

[cloak]

I usually just use a power head each week to stir up whatever crap may have settled down there. This gets pumped up into the DT and then I either siphon it out during a water change or catch it on the way back down in a filter sock. I get a great feeding response from the corals when this is done, but because this is done on a regular basis there's really not much down there to begin

 

[scooter31707]

I actually do my water changes out of the sump. When I do I use a Maxijet 1200 connected to a hose going to the Brute container. It sucks most of the trash up.