Anyone 'Close Loop' vacuum detritus through a filter sock?

psumms · Mar 23, 2021

With daily auto-water changes, i've not 'manually' remove water from my system for a couple of years. Have some dead areas in the bottom of my sump that have collected crap, going to stick a powerhead in there to keep things in motion going forward but about to get in a vac it out. Any reason I shouldn't use a pump to suck up and drain straight back into the sump through a fine filter sock? Thinking there could be some nitrate release disturbing the detritus. Anyone do this? Bad idea? Any advice?

KingTideCorals · Mar 23, 2021

Ive seen it done and tried my hands at close loop water pulling for flatworm control, I don't see why it wouldnt be able to work!

mdb_talon · Mar 23, 2021

I do it every WC i do its quite effective just a short hose for siphon and a clamp to keep bottom of hose in sock

terraincognita · Mar 23, 2021

psumms said:
With daily auto-water changes, i've not 'manually' remove water from my system for a couple of years. Have some dead areas in the bottom of my sump that have collected crap, going to stick a powerhead in there to keep things in motion going forward but about to get in a vac it out. Any reason I shouldn't use a pump to suck up and drain straight back into the sump through a fine filter sock? Thinking there could be some nitrate release disturbing the detritus. Anyone do this? Bad idea? Any advice?

I'm sure some super small particulates might make it through the sock, but overall you're probably doing more help than any harm by far.

Can't see why it's a bad idea at all.

Seen videos about a guy who did this so he could spend an entire hour vacuuming his entire sand bed once every 2 weeks lol.

polyppal · Mar 23, 2021

this guy made a pretty cool one

Biokabe · Mar 23, 2021

zatch said:
this guy made a pretty cool one

I have a variation on that one (made based on his video, just used a couple different parts) and I can confirm that it works and is really quite effective. I haven't actually needed to turn on the pump yet, might try that the next time I vacuum. The only real change I made to it is I used this gravel vac in place of his - it has a little pre-filter disc inside to prevent large objects from getting siphoned up, and it's considerably smaller.

One thing you will need to do - you'll be sending down a good deal more water to your sump compared to your usual drain, so either tune your return pump higher or tweak your drain valve so that not as much water is going down your overflow as usual.

sfin52 · Mar 23, 2021

Use a 5 micron or smaller sock very little will get through. I do this when I deep clean my tanks.

spsick · Feb 27, 2023

Bump to see how this worked out. I tried 2 things that did not work well.

-tried the pump through a RO canister with a pump attached. Worked ok but a huge hassle to get siphon going and then the 5 micron sediment filter plugged pretty fast.

-also tried siphoning into a 100micron 7x14 filter sock. That’s too course so a lot of the detritus made it through.

Next thing I’ll try is siphon through filter sock into a bucket then pump through a 25 micron sediment filter back into tank see how that works.