To clean or not to clean your sump? That is the question.

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

Do you guys clean or not your sump? If you answer is yes. how often? If you can show us a picture.

 

[Bdog4u2]

I clean mine every 6 months and b4 I had a refugium I would remove it and hose it out once a year. I have so many union I can remove all my plumbing in minutes or I pump out most of the water and then use a shop vac. I also keep a small clean up crew in my sump

 

[nitro]

I try once a month to clean it out, there can be a lot of detritus sitting at the bottom....

 

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

I am planning to do it this weekend. I will take a pictures before and after.

 

[AdamNC]

I don't have a sump but do use a hob filter to hold all my media and a sponge. I'll clean the sponge once a week but about every 6 months I'll completely clean the filter. The mess that come out is surprising, I'm sure the same thing happens in sumps.

 

[ksfulk]

I clean out my sump about once a month during my extended maintenance. I use a bucket head shop vac from HomeDepot with a 1/4" adapter on it, so I can vaccum out the detritus without sucking all of the water out of the sump. Usually its only a single 5 gallon bucket of water that comes out of there, and I generally have it clean prior to it being full. Its easy to know how much water to add back in since its in a 5 gallon bucket to begin with! Then I just vac the sand, and replace the water in the DT/sump and turn the pumps back on. Takes 10-15 minutes if I being really thorough.

 

[Texas Reefer]

I do my water change from my sump, so I keep stuff syphoned out fairly well. BUT, I have a good sized refugium in the sump also, and I'm terrified of cleaning it. I'm sure there's way too much gunk under all that macro and micro algae growing in there. I've used it to house fish. I just don't want to lose any pods, brittle stars, etc...