The sink of iniquity: your sump.

[oldpaddy]

Be careful if you clean out your sump. A couple of months ago I quit a part time job cleaning marine tanks. There was this one customer who could be very difficult to deal with, but I knew how to handle her. She had her system set up for a year and wanted her sump cleaned out. I convinced her that it was not worth it at the time and that there was no sense doing it at that moment. A week after I quit I got a call from her stating that the company owner and my replacement nuked her tank. She told me she had them clean out the sump and when they were done and turned the system back on there was a pop and the power went out. Sounds like they had a bad short. They ended up killing half the tank and setting off a new cycle.
Long story short, be very careful when playing with water and electricity. Especially in tight areas like a sump. Also, don't **** me off or I'll quit and you'll be screwed

 

[homer1475]

Since this is my first tank with a separate sump, I started out keeping it pristine(cleaning it out every week when I did my weekly maintenance), then read an article by Randy about not cleaning the sump area so critters have a place to breed and eat.

My sump is split into 3 sections(skimmer/overflow, fuge, return), since I stopped cleaning my fuge section(I still clean the other 2 and suck out the detritus) I have way more pods and worms(critters) in that section. So theres some anecdotal evidence to not keeping your sump pristine.

 

[Sk8r]

The deal is, if you have LIFE in the sump, let it be. If you don't, if it's dead down there, it's not ok.