There was a time when I would look into the sump and think, "oh gee, wow, look at all those feather dusters! That's so awesome that they are thriving. The tank must be doing good!"

Needless to say, I don't really feel that way anymore.

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The Kent scraper and I spent some quality time today expunging those damn feather dusters. What kinda surprises me is that these things don't infest the display tank. I guess they are preyed upon by the fish before they reach plague proportions.

So anyway, some 8 hours later, about a dozen towels, four 5 buckets to hold wet equipment, two spent kent scrapers, my sump was shiny again.

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One thing I realized while cleaning up the return pump is that I actually had not touched this thing in over two years. Pretty much since the day I plopped it into the sump and turned it on, it has ran like a champ! I know I should have taken it out more frequently but I never did and that didn't seem to bother it. It never once failed to restart during power outages and is still the quietest piece of equipment on my tank.

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I'm not sure why I took a picture of my skimmate, but I did.

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uh ya.. I filled a 4L ice cream pale, TWICE with tubeworms/feather dusters. :lol:

oh, I have been running the dual bioPellet reactors for about a year now I guess. So far no ill effects (I don't think). I'm sure I have way more pellets than I need, but I don't have to top them off as frequently as I used to when I only had one reactor.

Sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon :razz:....looks like you just drove her off the lot tho

Almost inspires me to clean mine! Almost....

Interesting. The idea of the chunk of styrofoam holding what I assume to be probes is nifty! Not sure about the whole cleaning thing though. So now you're removed all of these nasty feather dusters & tube worms that were presumably consuming some amount of nutrients or whatever in your system. Are you not somewhat apprehensive about how that may affect it short term? Might be a bit of a shock removing all that matter at once? Something else in your system now has to take up the nutrient consuming duties all these little critters were performing? Sorry, tons of questions, but really interested in what your observation & perhaps water parameters will be for the next little while.

I finally pulled a canister filter off line on my system a little while ago (it developed a leak). I don't have a sump & was kind of assuming the canister would operate as a pseudo or mini sump for me so I had been running one since pretty much day one. In the beginning, being a noob, I had all the filter media in there, ceramic, different foam pads, the works. In the end I just ran a bag of carbon. Over the years the media baskets developed the same encrustation of wormy things & I let them be during my cleanings, thinking they were a good thing. I've always had varying amounts of hair algae in my system & don't sweat it too much provided it doesn't encroach some of the coral I have. Didn't notice a huge difference after taking the canister off line. It has receded in some areas, most noticeable in the flow regions where the canister used to return to the tank. However, it still persists in some areas & I need to remove it manually from time to time. The term nitrate factory is used often in discussions about canisters. My theory is, ok, so it may be or may become a nitrate factory. What happens when you remove it? Something else in your system has to take up the slack, like your live rock or sandbed. Otherwise, would not ammonia & nitrite build up to toxic levels? As long as there is livestock that needs to be fed, your system will produce nitrates, with or without a canister. Getting a little off topic, but yeah, some info on the effect of your cleaning efforts would be interesting.

+1

Ya, it has worked out quite well. Ghetto, but it does the job :-)

The thought had crossed my mind as I was harvesting gobs and gobs of tube worms and dusters. No doubt they will probably affect the system in some way. What that affect is remains to be seen (or not). Certainly there is the possibility that my tank will crash. Or maybe it'll just be very very unhappy with the lack of dusters.

I'm hoping that will be the skimmer, since the skimmer is really what's competing with the dusters for organic nutrients in the form of particulates, etc. I'm not so sure the worms and dusters directly consume nitrates and/or phosphates. If they do the BioPellets and GFO should be able to pick up the slack.

Speaking of parameters, before I performed the deep clean on the sump I did a gamut of tests as I realized I hadn't performed any tests since last August. I was prepared for some crazy bad numbers but it wasn't as bad as I feared.

Nitrates: 0.2 (Salifert)
Phosphates: 0.04 (Hana)
Alk: 7.7 (Hana)
Calc: 450 (Hana)
Mag: Untested (because I hate testing Mag).

It has been almost 24 hours now since the removal so I will do another set of tests after dinner and see if the numbers are any different.

Hey thanks for the detailed responses. I thought about the skimmer taking up slack of removed critters as well, plus your system is fairly large, so maybe just a little bump in the road until it balances out. There are hobbyists out there that go to some lengths to provide cryptic zones to cultivate all the stuff you removed, so I thought I'd throw my ideas out there.

My thinking on removing of the lattice of tubeworms is that it's sort of a paradox having them in there: they might be removing nutrients but they also trap detritus like crazy which probably builds up more nasties. Plus, if they eat, then they poop, so, they may not be all that beneficial in the end. Hard to say.

I know I look at the ones in my sump and think "ugh, need to do something about that" but I never do.

I know in my old tank I would sort of do the sump clean thing every year or two and things would look better for a while afterwards. But it was always a nasty ordeal too that would last all day. No wonder it gets procrastinated on!