How to clean and maintain my overflow?

[Bigk40k]

I had the bottom of my tank drilled, then I siliconed my own glass overflow, I used a three drain BeAnAnimal style overflow drain so there's three pipes and not much room left for my hand of any thing wide, what's happening is over time a large amount of food and detritus is building up at the bottom as there's no turbulence getting down there. I managed to put a small bio cube pump down there but it's old and wimpy and isn't really doing the job. Should I just try to get a newer small pump and put it down there to keep the water disturbed or is there another way to go about cleaning this decently?

 

[Irishman]

Maybe throw some snails and hermits in there?

 

[TheRealChrisBrown]

Start a siphon with some 1/2" or 3/4" inch tubing into a bucket when you do a water change and siphon that crap out of there. If you find your tube is flexing too much see if you can find some rigid airline tubing or pvc to go over the siphon hose so you can get all the way down there.

 

[reeferpueblo]

what I use to do with the 200 was just before I did my water change i'd remove the over flow tube and allow it to flush in 2 my filter socks that keep my over flow clean. then just do water change and when done replace with clean socks. of course that's if you didn't glue your tube in. if you did you can just put a small powerful pump to keep water moving and it will keep moving so it can betaken out hope this helps ,

 

[SynDen]

Shopvac works great, but honestly you shouldn't need to clean it unless you need to remove or repair something in there. Otherwise a snail or two is all you need. Fan worms and other things will eventually build up in there and make a cryptic zone which helps with filetering and such

 

[quackenbush]

just put some bristleworms in there:
http://www.marinecolorado.org/forum/off-topic/the-lounge/638574-got-bristleworms

 

[CRW Reef]

If you decide on putting small pumps I would recommend these cheap small pumps from Amazon.

I keep two in my sump to keep detritus from settling as well. One in the middle chamber and one next to the return pump blowing opposite direction pump is sucking.

SUNSUN JVP Series Submersible Circulation Powerhead Pump (530GPH, 2-pack) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYIHGXS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_BTuZwbRMFQ27T