Fuge... To clean or not to clean

[Loki]

I have a 40 gallon breeder for my fuge. I was staring at it tonight and thought I should put the rest of the rock I have in the garage in there. So I did. One of the pieces I put it is a 10ish lb pukani rock (it's about the size of a basketball), and to make it fit I had to move some of the rock that is currently in the fuge. Upon moving said rock I stirred up a fair amount of detritus. Which made me think about cleaning the fuge.

I do not have sand in the fuge but it is no longer bare bottom. It has 1/16-1/8" of fish crud on the bottom of it. I now have ~60-70 lbs of rock, tons of pods, snails, hermit crabs, chaeto, cyano, all kinds of other stuff, and some weird slug thing(I have no idea what it is or where it came from).

Just wondering if the rest of you ever do any maintenance on your fuge.

Why or why not.

 

[BarbH]

Good question, interested to hear what others have to say will be following along.

 

[Young Frankenstein]

The question is ........ do you have a problem with nitrates or phosphates ? if yes I would clean it if not leve it alone

 

[Steelerfan747]

Sounds like good advice from above. You could also just try siphoning out out as it should not hurt. Good luck, will be checking back

 

[reef life]

Clean mine when it needs it

 

[Loki]

No problems with nitrates. Maybe phosphates but the algae in the fuge take care of that.

Just curious what everyone does.

 

[ritter6788]

I run my fuge bare bottom and vacuum it almost every water change. I pull the chaeto and rocks out and rinse them too.

 

[Dashiki]

Does that hurt pod population?

 

[Steven R]

I dont stir mine up I am running miracle mud and sand with Chaeto. I put a couple hermits in and some snails All nice and clean. But if i was in your shoes like said above just siphon out you don't want the gunk breaking down.

 

[droblack]

Clean it out, either by syphoning or pumping or just unhooking and rinsing. Eventually, all that detritus will become a problem. I recommend you run an MJ12 or something like that in the sump just to keep the bottom clean and the detritus in the water column where it can be skimmed out, eaten by corals, etc.