When its "been awhile" since you deep cleaned

[SamMule]

It's been probably 2 years since I pulled apart the pumps in the back of my AIO and cleaned them/vacuumed the sump. Murdered about 20k vermetid snails and sucked a good 10 gallons of brown water that was HEAVILY saturated with detritus.

In short... here's a PSA to regularily clean your sump.

 

[CasperOe]

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

Wow!that's...well....

 

[sfin52]

 

[SamMule]

I bet you won't believe how much better that skimmer is working

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

I bet you won't believe how much better that skimmer is working

I do pumps/skimmer/reactors every couple months & even then the efficiency increase surprises me!

 

[DIYreefer]

Watch your tank closely over the next few days. While the intent is obviously good, sometimes doing very deep cleaning like this can be counterproductive. For lack of a more scientific explanation, you basically disrupt the biological balance of the tank and things can take a turn for the worse.

 

[SamMule]

Watch your tank closely over the next few days. While the intent is obviously good, sometimes doing very deep cleaning like this can be counterproductive. For lack of a more scientific explanation, you basically disrupt the biological balance of the tank and things can take a turn for the worse.

Yes, I know. I actually did half 2 days ago, and half today in order to lessen the "shock" a little.

 

[kevgib67]

I do my idea of a deep clean every 2 weeks but it is only a 32g.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

That’s awesome filtration. Should have kept it all.

 

[SamMule]

Maybe... I was on the fence about removing the gunk in the bottom of the sump. However, Nitrates and Phosphates have been high and not really coming down much with water changes/LaCl. I thought I would see if getting rid of it would help. Had 40 nitrates and .36 phosphates before the change. Will try and test tomorrow to see how much they changed.

 

[CMMorgan]

 

[Tomb85]

I clean every month so I know what condition my equipment is in. The cleaner your equipment the less chance it will effect your tanks biom.

 

[Paul B]

I do have to clean the pumps occasionally or they look like yours and some of my pumps are probably 30 years old. I don't have a sump but I do run a reverse undergravel filter and once I let it go for about 25 years before I lifted the plates to see what was growing under there.

A lot. Then I let it sit there for another 15 years until I had to remove it to move here to my new house. I threw everything including the livestock in vats for the 6 hour move and I had to chisel off the growth.

I have a large DIY skimmer and when I moved here I figured I would clean it. I am not sure how long it ran before I cleaned it but it had to be at least 15 years maybe 20.

I don't even know how water ran through it because it was completely filled with tube worms and it is 4" wide and 5' tall so it probably wasn't working as well as it should have been.

I had to chop out the tube worms with a broom stick handle and it made enough "crushed coral" to start a new tank.

A few weeks ago I again cleaned it because it was 5 years since the last cleaning.