Derek Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 I noticed that my overflow tends to get a lot of sediment down at the bottom of it. I do not think that it is actually waste, just seems to be sand, maybe some food particles. How and how often should overflow boxes be cleaned? I was considering draining the overflow box again this week when I do my water change to give it a good scraping and cleaning but do not really know if it is even necessary. Should it just be flushed on occasion? Right now my tank is pretty cloudy from flushing it. I have not flushed it in quite a while so there was some build up of sand and other stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offroadodge Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 i put 2 mexican turbos in my overflow to control the algae and detris in it. They wiped it out in like a week. JMO and my results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zarathustra2 Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 I have had a lot of success on my 90 with setting up my overflow as a copepod pile. In my case i have a durso standpipe to keep the water pretty high up and level. At the bottom I have a crushed coral/shell substrate of about an inch with around a foot of piled up rock rubble. I threw a couple of pieces of rubble i got from the bottom of RCA's tank in the middle to seed with sponges and such. At the top i have a piece of foam filter with mangroves planted in it so the roots go down into the copepod pile. Some of the snails just migrated naturally to this area. I have little fan worms, sponges and, especially, copepods out the wazoo. It also provides the perfect spot for the mangroves to filter out bad stuff. Mine have seemed to grow almost twice as fast as others i have seen being right there with the raw tank water always going past them prior to getting into the sump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 I have had a lot of success on my 90 with setting up my overflow as a copepod pile. In my case i have a durso standpipe to keep the water pretty high up and level. At the bottom I have a crushed coral/shell substrate of about an inch with around a foot of piled up rock rubble. I threw a couple of pieces of rubble i got from the bottom of RCA's tank in the middle to seed with sponges and such. At the top i have a piece of foam filter with mangroves planted in it so the roots go down into the copepod pile. Some of the snails just migrated naturally to this area. I have little fan worms, sponges and, especially, copepods out the wazoo. It also provides the perfect spot for the mangroves to filter out bad stuff. Mine have seemed to grow almost twice as fast as others i have seen being right there with the raw tank water always going past them prior to getting into the sump. Awesome idea for what is otherwise "wasted" space. Thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 Yeah, I have some natural macro growing in the overflow box from some light that spills over into it from the main lighting. Was thinking of getting back there and scraping it out until I noticed the millions of pods back there. Gonna leave it alone for now, maybe introduce some chaeto there as well to assist the chaeto in my sump already, snap on a grow out light to shine into the overflow on a reverse lighting schedule and presto... instant fuge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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