I have 7 socks that are thrown out and replaced yearly. I've found that the sump and display stay much cleaner when I switch them out every day. With all the biological processes going on in a marine tank (especially a reef tank), the faster anything that might decay is removed the better. Our tanks just can't stay as clean as water change day all week/month. Our systems are in a constant state of decline unless we intervene and keep them as clean as we can. Use a filter sock for just one day and see what color it turns in 24 hours. If the sock didn't catch that junk where do you think it would go? Our skimmers are never going to remove detritus from our sumps. I don't even know how this came to be an accepted belief. My skimmer can't process detritus because it's heavier than water. Detritus doesn't magically get lifted up into the skimmer bubbles and wind up in the cup. I don't believe my skimmer is different from other ones either. Eventually, whatever the skimmer pump pulls in builds up inside the skimmer body and settles to the bottom where I have to manually remove it every couple months or so when I break down the skimmer and give it a good vinegar bath. I'm pretty sure most detritus passes right through the skimmer body and through the outlet back to the tank. I couldn't imagine how much detritus would be in my skimmer body/sump if I didn't use filter socks.
If detritus and particulates are freely moving through your sump, you're going to have more maintenance than the the 30 seconds it takes to replace a sock. All that gunk has to go somewhere, and it usually winds up on the bottom of your sump,in your sand bed, on your rocks and holed up in your circulation and return pumps where it builds up and causes other problems like nuisance algae, diatoms, high phosphate, nitrate, etc. Stirring your shallow sand bed, changing your filter socks, turkey basting the live rock and scraping the glass panels in your tank more than once or twice per week can go a long way in avoiding old tank syndrome IMHO. It literally takes me less than 5 minutes to do all of the above if I do them more frequently. I've actually found that there is less and less accumulation of detritus and decay as the months roll on and the tank matures. That's a lot easier than mixing up "oh no" large quantities of seawater and changing out expensive medias more frequently to lower nutrients when things start to go astray.
I also don't subscribe to the old belief of keeping my hands out of the tank and letting things be. I feel that's how most people eventually get in trouble trying to catch up, and inevitably dealing with old tank syndrome. That doesn't mean I touch all my corals and move things around all the time. In fact, I never, or rarely do. My hands are probably in my system at least 6 times a week cleaning, tweaking and just generally checking to make sure everything's working right. I've got 5 minutes a day, so why not? If you don't have a few minutes a day, this isn't the easiest of hobbies.
Of all the maintenance tasks necessary to keep an SPS reef thriving, 30 seconds to change a sock doesn't seem very labor intensive to me at all. You can vaccuum a "sockless" sump every week, but much of that detritus is making its' way back to the tank where it will slowly add to the nutrient stores in the tank. You're not getting it all...or even a majority of it. I keep a bucket in my garage with all the dirty filter socks and a plastic bag next to the sump under the tank with the clean ones. It takes me longer to feed the fish, which is why I'm confused why some view it as a nagging chore.
Socks for me.
. Thought it was from dosing oyster feast as john recommended it to me. Well his staff did so I tried it. Haven't really seen coral improvement from it but I bought it so been using it till its gone anyways.
