How do you clean a planted tank?

[Talisman]

Ive been looking at some of the pic on here with heavily planted tanks, some look beautiful.

But my question is when you cover the front of the tank with (hair grass i think it was) lots of the short growing plants and fill the back up with taller plant, how the hell do you clean the gravel/sand without damaging all your hard work getting plants growing.???

 

[aloaring]

Sure someone will shoot me down if i'm wrong but i don't think they do as the plants thrive on the nutrients in the substrate. Quite a few of them (Gf225) have malaysian trumpet snails in their gravel these littel critters basically turn the substrate for you ensureing no nasty toxins build up. Plus they tend to change their tanks on a regular basis so that probably helps to clens thier gravel!!

 

[kenneth_kpe]

simple you dont usually people poke around their substrate with a stick to release toxic gasses that start to build up, you see the mulm that builds up in a planted tank is actually more of a plant fertilizer malaysian trumpet snails also do the trick with turning the substrate around

 

[houndour]

yep, I prod with a stick to release gases (especially as I have sand), I just clean the open areas of substrate. If I go too near to my hair grass I suck it up

 

[Talisman]

lol, ok thanks for that guys. Guess ill be buying a load of plants then. cool

 

[jimbooo]

yeah right. that works fine if like GF225 you have massive filtration and a few tiny fish producing little waste.

i myself have a planted tank with a 7 inch sailfin plec and 2 boesmani rainbow. if i didn't gravel vac every week my cories would be scrabbling around in a sea of poo.

if you are in my situation the answer is same as normal but dont touch the bottom. wave the vac around just above the surface, enough to stirr up the poo. then it will get sucked up with the water. takes a bit of practice but you get used to it.

also once the plants become established you'll be hard puched to uproot them with a gravel vac.

 

[FishFreaks]

do you take out any of the watera/

 

[jimbooo]

yes, a gravel vac is just a syphon with a wide end. as the water is sucked out it takes the debris with it.

no more than 30% a week though.

 

[RYO]

Same here as jimbooo, i have a few fish more than is recomended so i tend to do 2 water changes a week (around 25% ) i use a small diameter hose to suck up all the smegg from all the nooks and cranies. Lol i havnt got much free space to dig in to the sand (its root city down there)

Plus they tend to change their tanks on a regular basis so that probably helps to clens thier gravel!! tongue2.gif

lol so true

 

[Sime]

i aggree - my corys are devils for stirring rubbish up... and i dont know where they get it from. I hoover once a week taking about 25% of water out which is mainly full of dead leaves.

 

[kenneth_kpe]

oops sorry forgot about the fish load hehe my bad

 

[George Farmer]

Heater cables help too. Oh, and replacing the entire substrate!

Actually I kept my substrate free from vacuuming for 18 months without a problem. As mentioned though I have powerful filtration and low bio-load. This combined with lots of plant growth and heated substrate enabled this to be possible.

I don't intend vacuuming my new substrate for the same reasons - I actually have much less bio-load now too.