I need to do the same to my overflow box, it looks much the same. If I could just vacuum up the mud on the bottom and let the featherdusters be I would but they are so delicate that it's impossible.
I've kind of given up on being nice to them in my sump, I take my floor pump and vacuum up the detritus that settles in there. The pump sounds like a blender and it's nasty but I don't know what else to do about it. That amount of mud settling on the bottom has to be harboring the baddie nutrients.
On Saturday I tried to use a turkey baster to clean out the mud from my 65g's sump but the H2S smell it released told me to stop and just empty out the whole thing and clean it at the sink. I didn't even do the skimmer but it needs a powerscrub as well but it was already hours of my life as it was.
I shudder at the thought of eventually doing the same to my big tank's sump. I'm hoping that that water change vacuum trick lets me push that particular task back for a while for the time being..
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-- Tony
My next hobby will be flooding my basement while repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall and tearing up $100 bills. Whee!
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