Plumbing Maintenance

[bgoldb]

About every 12 months, I disassemble my plumbing and give the inside of the pipework a good cleaning. There is always a decent amount of sludge buildup in the pipes. Does anyone have any tips on how to better maintain the inside of the pipes and reduce the buildup? Is this buildup normal? Does anyone else clean their plumbing as part of their overall maintenance routine? I already use filter socks and GAC that are changed out/replaced every week. The tank itself stays very clean and my water parameters are very stable but don't like the idea of having dirty pipes. I also clean my sump every 4-6 weeks.

My equipment Includes:
15 Gallon Tank - Advanced Acrylics
Advanced Acrylics Custom Sump
Aqua UV Sterilizer - 15 Watt
Reef Octopus BH-50 Multi-Mount Protein Skimmer (Currently Turned Off)
Cobalt Heater - 100 Watt
Custom Media Reactor
Tunze Osmolator Nano 3152 ATO
Ecotech MP-10
Ecotech Vectra M1
AI Hydra 32 Light
Neptune Apex
Neptune Trident
Neptune FMM with 1 Flow Sensor
GHL Doser (Currently Dosing All-For-Reef and Acropower)
Auto Water Changing Station
Neptune DOS
Tropic Marin Pro Salt
Awair Glow (Ambient CO2 Monitoring)

 

[Saltees]

Not necessary for pipes but good practice for sure. I would do so more for checking and lubing of the rubber seals for watertightness.

 

[ca1ore]

By all means clean the pipes if it makes you feel better .... really not necessary unless it’s translucent tube and you’re getting algae growth. All surfaces will accumulate biofilm that in turn will attract detritus. Rarely significant though. When I upgraded my tank in 2018, there was very little buildup on the insides of the pipes over the prior four years.

 

[bgoldb]

Interestingly, my ORP rises after a good pipe cleaning.

 

[mfinn]

Once in a while when I used clear flexible tubing I would clean it out, but since I switched to all pvc I never clean it out.
The last long running tank ( 10 years) I took down had a small amount of biofilm in it but really nothing to worry about.
I do clean out my sump every year or so. Sometimes it goes a couple years.

 

[muzikalmatt]

Would this type of cleaning potentially affect your biological filtration or do beneficial bacteria typically not colonize in the plumbing? I know I've heard horror stories of vermetid snails infesting plumbing so I'm sure it's not a bad idea to do this kind of cleaning periodically.

 

[Ryan Wolf]

Two words: Pandora's Box. Anytime you start getting into stuff like that-- be prepared for the unexpected to happen. I stick to just stuff typically cleaned: pumps, skimmer, etc.

 

[FishGeist]

Curious...

Would a wooden air stone before the pump agitate some of the Detritus/sponges/film inside the returns?

Reasoning...

When the return is shut off and then on again, I get lot of Sponges and other stuff spit out of the return back into the tank.

I would just like to clean this stuff and wonder if the air stone trick would work for a couple of hours before a water change.


Thanks