Cleaning Your Shrimp Tank

[Nightfall]

I have a 7g tank that is currently housing about 20 cherry shrimp, a mixture of 3-4 week old shrimplets and about 9 adults. There is also a female carrying eggs right now. The tank is heavily planted. Some of the plants are potted or growing on driftwood but some of the plants are actually planted in the substrate and really thriving there.

So far I've been doing water changes by scooping out about 25-40% of the water out and replacing it. It doesn't take too long because it's a small tank, but it would be faster to use a vacuum and it would clean far more thoroughly (I have very fine sand-like gravel that readily traps detritus). Having the shrimplets (and more to come soon), though, I'm worried I'll kill them if I use a vacuum siphon to clean the tank. I can move the potted/driftwood plants easily, but of course vacuuming could disturb the planted vegetation and I don't want that either.

How do you guys clean your shrimp tanks?

Before I gave it over completely to the shrimp, the tank housed a Betta, and then a Bristlenose and a Siamese Flying Fox, so even though the shrimps make minimal mess I still have some mess from those other fish left in the gravel so I would really like to clean it thoroughly.

 

[jocie1976]

I use a gravel siphon weekly in my shrimp tank that has sand. My sand is black tahitian moon sand and very heavy, does not get suctioned up. I can push it into the sand just like I would with gravel. The only way you would kill the shrimplets with the siphon would be if they didn't get out of the way and the siphon crushed them. Just make sure to "push" them aside. I would also check the bucket after you finish siphoning for any shrimp that might have been sucked up. You should be able to net them out of the bucket and back into the tank with no problem.

 

[Nightfall]

Okay, I'll give it a try. They definitely need a vacuum clean. They're pretty easy to see against the black substrate so hopefully there won't be any accidents. Thank you!