HOW often or when should I clean my Freshwater Sump?

[RAPALA27]

HOW often or when should I clean my Freshwater Sump?


My aquarium dimensions are 170x60x60 and sump 160x50x50


I do a 25% water change every week and top up water in the sump every 3 days.


HOW often or when should I clean my Freshwater Sump and should I change/replace all the mechanical sponges for new ones?


I have my system up and running since 6 months now my fish are very healthy and I haven’t changed or cleaned the sump even once, I also have allot of Bio-ball, ceramic rings in one chamber a 5 gallon K3 media running in one chamber with mechanical sponges between chambers.


I also have a separate JBL 1500i external filter running on the main aquarium which I clean out every 2 months.


Any information on sump cleaning would be much appreciated…

 

[esoxlucius]

I really don't have to do a great deal other than clean my mechanical sponges in tank water every week. I keep the same sponges all the time, the only thing that changes is new filter floss every week. Then 2 or 3 times a year i'll carefully remove my bags of bio and gently rinse any gunk off in tank water. Thats the beauty of a sump, very maintainance friendly. On my set up all my water goes through mechanical filtration before it hits the bio section so my bio is kept pretty clean. On your set up you have tank water hitting some bio before it goes through your mid section sponges. This way your first section of bio will probably get clogged up faster than your mid section bio. It's not a problem, you may just need to rinse out your first section bio a bit more often than your mid section bio. Some people don't touch their bio at all which is also fine if that's what you want to do but i heard that keeping the bio free from gunk helps promote healthy BB colonies so i clean my bio now a couple of times a year.

 

[ragin_cajun]

I haven't cleaned my sump in 2 years. I made it so I wouldn't have to clean it. I change out filter socks and vacuum the display tank.

 

[RAPALA27]

Thanks guys i had no idea about filter socks will get some ASAP...

 

[jaws7777]

+1 on the socks. I just added an ac110 to my sump to run purigen and filled it with poret foam un intended side affect is my sump is spotless

 

[soupa2]

I clean it when I see a lot of gunk or brown stuff settling on the bottom of my bio media. Usually around 6-9 months depending how often I change my filter socks.

 

[slippery slimecoat]

I clean it when I see a lot of gunk or brown stuff settling on the bottom of my bio media. Usually around 6-9 months depending how often I change my filter socks.

+1

 

[henria86]

i change my filter socks every week an wash out the sponges every 2 months an vacuum out the gunk in the sump every 6 months

 

[Alexxxxsv14]

I just barely started my sump bout a month ago and I only change the sock, I put a clean one and clean the other one and I have 3 to rotate from it works well like that. But my media rings and water overall looks clean so haven't really though of cleaning anything yet

 

[duanes]

If nitrates rise above your bench mark goal, then I believe its time to rinse biomedia.
My benchmark was 5ppm, so I cleaned out biomedia about once per week (I kept biomedia in bags for ease of pulling it out, swishing around in tank water, and dropping the bag right back in the sump). And cleaned out mechanical, media every other day with my water changes.