Pooey Sand...

[Laza]

hi everybody

we are having a problem keeping our sand clean - weve got some very pale, fine sand in the tank which we sort of regret now as it shows up all the poo and the slightest bit of dirt - weve tried hoovering it with a gravel vac and doing little cyclone movements to pick up all the dirt but it still leaves it messy as we are not getting enough of the poo etc into the vac, even after a 30 litre change.

any tips or suggestions on how we can do a better job of this, as they're pooin' like a goodun!

thanks in advance

 

[lilfishie]

how often do you vac and what fish do you have? pleco by any chance?

 

[Laza]

yeh, how'd ya guess.....

got 2 gibbiceps - theyre probably the main culprits. also 6 zebra danios, 2 opaline gouramis, and a RTBS. weve only had them a couple of days and theres already excess poo n stuff, and weve used the vac both evenings so far.

how often should we be vac-ing? id have thought once a day would be ok, but seems not!

 

[lilfishie]

plecs are poo machienes, they never stop poooping or eating and with sand it just shows up even more. are you aware that gibbis grow over 24" ad are hard to get rid of at certain sizes

 

[TubbyLaLa]

We have several plecs in our 300L I do a three bucket poo vac moving everything that could have poo under it the let it settle and do one final bucket worth of vac to get rid of the last bits. I do this daily and it works out about 10% of water volume in the tank. On the gravel vac i took off the wider syphon bit and just use the tube picks up the poo a lot better and you take out less water in the long run. Good luck!

 

[Behold]

We have several plecs in our 300L I do a three bucket poo vac moving everything that could have poo under it the let it settle and do one final bucket worth of vac to get rid of the last bits. I do this daily and it works out about 10% of water volume in the tank. On the gravel vac i took off the wider syphon bit and just use the tube picks up the poo a lot better and you take out less water in the long run. Good luck!

Do you mean the whole large tube bit or just the wider end???

 

[TubbyLaLa]

On our gravel vac (we have a huge one) there was a wide syphon bit then the long plastic tube it attatched to
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ETA(had to put the dots in the syphon bit to make the pic work couldn't just use the space bar!)

like that I hope it makes sense!!!! So we took off the wide syphon bit (the whole wide mouth and wider tube) and just used the long tube that attatched to it, a bit of hose pipe works just as well. You have to be careful about not sucking up smaller inhabitants but it works very well for poo cleaning!
Hope this helps

 

[-germ-]

got 2 gibbiceps - theyre probably the main culprits. also 6 zebra danios, 2 opaline gouramis, and a RTBS. weve only had them a couple of days and theres already excess poo n stuff, and weve used the vac both evenings so far.

Sorry but its got to be asked....
Has the tank been cycled?

 

[Laza]

yes.... we'd been cycling it for about 5 weeks and testing it regularly in our eagerness to get fish and finally on tuesday it was ready. i think its probably just the sand being so pale it shows up every last bit of dirt. all the fish have settled in well and are really lively apart from one of our opaline gouramis who sadly we came home to find dead yesterday - see my husbands post here http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=210117

thanks TubbyLaLa we'll have to try that instead

 

[Behold]

On our gravel vac (we have a huge one) there was a wide syphon bit then the long plastic tube it attatched to
\
.\-----------
.................\---------------------
................./---------------------
./-----------
/

ETA(had to put the dots in the syphon bit to make the pic work couldn't just use the space bar!)

like that I hope it makes sense!!!! So we took off the wide syphon bit (the whole wide mouth and wider tube) and just used the long tube that attatched to it, a bit of hose pipe works just as well. You have to be careful about not sucking up smaller inhabitants but it works very well for poo cleaning!
Hope this helps

Thanks a lot for that, we've tried it and its much more effective, the sand is a lot cleaner now Just what we needed.

 

[TubbyLaLa]

Glad it helped

 

[Behold]

Glad it helped

For others reading. ALOT less sand disruption is needed and less is sucked up.

 

[TubbyLaLa]

Just quickly (sorry if I am teaching my grandma to suck eggs or anything like it) but sand does need adgitating occasionally to avoid build up of nasty gassy pockets caused by anaerobic bacteria. What I do is once a week after i have cleaned the poo out i run my finders through all the sand to prevent it compacting. A long dowel rod will do the job as well if you can't reach into your tank. I guess if you have 2 gibbys they do a good job of shifting sand about on their own but I thought it was worth mentioning. I would feel bad if you did not already know to do this (or someone else reading this didn't) and my advice resulted in your sand not being moved around and your fish getting gassed out! You probably know this already but just to ease my mind I had to add it in. Pleccy poo cleaning can be a chore but they are beautiful!!

 

[DiscusKeeper403]

Didn't really follow the thread, but we did this at my old work.

For really poo/algae infested tanks, we would siphon up a lot of the sand (areas mainly effected) and rinse the sand out a few times just to get everything out. We would then take a cup and put it all back in.