The reef aquarium sump is a marvelous piece of equipment that does a lot for keeping a reef aquarium healthy and thriving. If your sump is not maintained and cleaned on a regular basis it does have the potential for doing the opposite of its job and nuking your tank. Sometimes life happens and we neglect our sump for long periods of time. The results can be a thick layer of organic waste, detritus, and algae overgrowth leading to the overall poor water chemistry for your reef tank. When a deep clean in your aquarium sump is necessary a wet-dry Shop-Vac can be the perfect tool for the job!
In this article, I share a Shop-Vac process I’ve used to conduct a deep clean on aquarium sumps and share some tips on preventing the need to conduct a deep clean in the first place.
How to Clean Your Reef Aquarium Sump, a Practical Schedule
Deep Cleaning with a Shop-Vac
There may come a time when your sump may need a deep clean and reset. Maybe you’ve slacked with regular maintenance over long periods of time and your sump has a deep thick sludge bed of detritus. When this happens the use of a Shop-Vac can make quick work of emptying and removing built-up organic waste. To do this you need to make sure that Shop-Vac is the wet-dry variety capable of vacuuming up water. Before taking on this task, brew enough fresh saltwater to replace the water that will be removed from the sump. I like to brew a little extra just in case it is needed.
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The first step in the process is to get your Shop-Vac ready for utilizing the wet feature. This can vary from model to model but is usually easily done. With my Shop-Vac I simply remove a sponge filter from the inside of the top and replace the top on the canister. Consult your owner’s manual for specifics based on the Shop-Vac model/brand that you own. Remember that water and electricity don’t mix and be safe with where you are plugging in your Shop-Vac not unnecessarily exposing any electricity to water.
Next prep your sump. You want to have your tank up and running as quickly as possible after the cleaning is complete. I remove all of the equipment that I want to clean out of the sump. This includes filter socks, media reactors, protein skimmer, and any additional equipment such as probes. At this point, I will remove and media bags and sponge filters that exist in the sump. This is a good time to soak equipment components in vinegar and water that you want to give a deep clean on such as the protein skimmer components. Do this in a sink or separate bucket.
The last piece of equipment you want to shut off is the return pump. Before shutting off the return pump you may want to consider cleaning out the refugium. Depending on what you have in the refugium it can have drawbacks cleaning it out. If you have a well-established copepod population sucking out the refugium will devastate the population. Depending on how filthy the refugium is, it still might be something worth doing and reseeding the refugium after. If you use live rock or marine pure blocks I usually will take these out and give them a good shake in some clean saltwater. If you use live sand it is usually not worth taking out unless you are going to replace the sand and plan to restart the bacteria population cycle. For Chaeto or other macroalgae, I take it out of the refugium and place it in a bucket with saltwater while the refugium is cleaned out.
Shut off the return pump and the tank sump will start filling with water. Once the aquarium has finished draining the amount of water it drains into the sump, you can mark the water level of the sump so you know how much water to replace.
The next step is to scrub the sump walls. I use a combination of tools for this task including rags, sponge scrubbers, and scrapers to get the walls of the sump clean. Be careful to use only acrylic-specific tools to not scratch your sump if it is made of acrylic.
Fire up your Shop-Vac and begin sucking out the water, gunk, and grim out of the sump. Leave the refugium be if you are not deep cleaning that chamber. Once everything is vacuumed out you may need to spot clean with a rag or paper towels areas of the sump that the Shop-Vac didn’t fully suck up. Once the sump is up to your cleanliness standards, move on to cleaning the return pump.
You want to be very careful when doing maintenance on your return pump. The return pump is the heart of the reef aquarium and if you accidentally break it, it could mean big troubles for your aquarium trying to find a replacement and then plumbing it back into the system. I actually like to have a spare pump on hand so that if the return pump fails or I accidentally break it, I can swap the return pump and plumb it in quickly. To clean out the return pump I disassemble the pump and soak its components in water and vinegar. I find that the time it takes to clean the sump and vacuum is enough time to loosen any build-up on the return pump with scrubbing. Clean each component of the return pump, thoroughly rinse each component, reassemble, and connect it back to your reef aquarium system.
After the return is reconnected to the system take your fresh saltwater and fill the sump back up to the water level you marked off earlier. Turn the return pump back on and make sure everything is flowing through the sump as expected. Also, pay close attention to the return pump connection to ensure nothing is leaking.
Next, begin adding the rest of the components back into the sump. If you cleaned the refugium place the base live rock, marine pure block, or sand back onto the bottom of the refugium. Place any chaeto or other macroalgae back into the sump. Clean each piece of equipment similar to how the return pump was cleaned and bring each piece back online one at a time. Replace your filter socks.
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Take a step back and admire your hard work. What was once a cesspool of fish poo and gunk now should look worlds better and move your tank closer to a healthy and thriving reef tank.
Preventing Detritus Build Up in the Reef Aquarium Sump
In successful reef keeping stability is king. Doing a drastic deep clean may be necessary at times, but is a considerable change to a reef tank’s current state. This is especially true if you have to disturb the refugium. A better strategy is to not allow your sump to get at a level where a deep clean with a Shop-Vac is necessary.
The best way I’ve found is to prevent the need for Shop-Vac deep clean is to complete regular tank and sump maintenance. I do regular water changes, filter sock changes, routine media changes, and keep my equipment running in tip-top shape. On occasion, I may find the need to remove some detritus in dead spots in the sump. This can be accomplished in a few ways including sucking it out with a turkey baster, siphoning it out with a siphon, or using an inline pump like a vacuum.
Another prevention technique is to increase the flow in your sump. The use of a few powerheads in low flow parts of the sump can be a good strategy to help keep detritus from settling in the sump and getting filtered out. A turkey baster can be used on occasion to lift up any small amounts of detritus as well.
Related Questions
What is seeding a refugium? Seeding a refugium usually refers to placing live copepods into the refugium allowing them to inhabit and populate the refugium. This is usually done when first starting a refugium.
Do I need to reseed the refugium after conducting a Shop-Vac deep clean on the refugium? It depends on what was there prior to deep cleaning the refugium. If you had a thriving population, to begin with, and you’ve readded existing macroalgae and base (live rock/sand/marine pure block) chances are that some of the copepods will survive and be reintroduced into the refugium. You may also have a pod population in the display tank with some of that population making its way back into the refugium. It never hurts to reseed though, which will help get the refugium copepod population stable quicker.