How To Clean A Planted Tank?

[toomie]

I don`t have any planted tanks as of yet, just a couple of potted plants in my tanks, but I was looking at some of the set ups you all have (SOOO many beautiful tanks, btw!) and I was wondering how you go about cleaning around all those plants? I`m having a hard enough time trying to vacuum a little bit of gravel with just a potted plant and a couple of ornaments. I would like to hear the different ways people have of cleaning their planted tanks.

 

[aaronnorth]

I don`t have any planted tanks as of yet, just a couple of potted plants in my tanks, but I was looking at some of the set ups you all have (SOOO many beautiful tanks, btw!) and I was wondering how you go about cleaning around all those plants? I`m having a hard enough time trying to vacuum a little bit of gravel with just a potted plant and a couple of ornaments. I would like to hear the different ways people have of cleaning their planted tanks.

50% water change per week.
wipe the glass where possible.

Just wave your hand over and/or shake the plants to free of detrius and do a water change to remove the waste. gravel vaccing isnt usually done, it isnt necassary and if you try it, it usually just ends up in a mess lol.

if you have space to gravel vac then you can do so.

 

[OldMan47]

In a lightly planted tank, I just hold the gravel vac above the substrate the way you might if you had sand. It is fairly effective at removing the surface dirt and the plants end up using the stuff that falls down below the surface so all is well. In a heavily planted tank, as Aaronnnorth said, you really can't do a gravel vac so you clean off the plants the best you can and just do a water change.

 

[waterdrop]

If you happen to have a more dense patch of lower lying plants, I have found that, if they are not rooted too lightly and do not have leaves that are too delicate, I can gently lower the gravel cleaning tube part way amongst the leaves and then give it a small-displacement "vibration" movement and this "wand-waving effect" will stir up quite a bit of debris, most of which will be taken right on in to the tube.

If the leaves were too delicate or if I thought I was damaging or uprooting the plants in any other way, I would drop back to using the other hand in the tank to wave the water near the plants, as Aaron has described and if it were all too thick I would just drop back to only waving the cylinder near the more exposed substrate areas and make it mostly just a water change as the others have said. Of course, under no circumstances should you lessen or not perform your water change itself.

~~waterdrop~~