Total Strip Down? (the Tank, That Is...)

[B13]

Simple question really, is it necessary to occasionally do a total strip down of a tank?

i.e. move the fishies (and filter sponges) to a safe location (a bucket of tank water!), drain the tank, clean the gravel, scrub the glass, check the sealant, etc, etc, etc.

(I'd imagine that saving say, 50% of the water would remove the need for a total re-cycle, right?)

 

[BBK1]

Well, no. It's not necessary at all.

 

[arobinson1984]

I suppose you may need to do one after 'x' amount of years but in general if you keep up to your maintenance you shouldnt have any probs.

Weekly:

1. Gravel Vac
2. Water change (I do 50%)
3. Clean glass to remove and gunk, marks, algae etc etc

Monthly or longer:

1. Check for leaks
2. Clean filter media in old tank water

These are simple maintenance tasks, I'm sure you may have others which will vary from tank to tank.

Andy

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, interesting, we were just discussing tank cleaning over in the other thread too.

In addition to agreeing with the above you've made me think about another thing I do:

I like to try to add one additional area of "cleaning focus" each time I'm doing a normal weekly clean, if possible. So, for instance, one week I'll take off the glass lid and go scrub it with lemon peel and vinagar and work on really getting it nice and clean all over. Then another week I might focus on cleaning the entire outside of the tank and around the tank as a focus area. Then another week I might focus on removing and cleaning the submerged ornaments.

Anyway, by not trying to do it all at once, it makes it not so onerous, but by always trying to do one, it helps things not get left forever, if you see what I mean?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I find that a total cleaning that involves removing the tank occupants is never needed. As WD said, you just stay on top of needed cleanings and you don't need to ever do a spring cleaning.

 

[B13]

Phew!

Thanks folks!!




I do regular, routine tank maintenance, water changes, testing, cleaning, scrubbing, plant trimming, snail culling, algae cleaning, stopping the khulis jumping out, etc and could never remember my dad doing a total strip down when he had a tank, so I was curious to see if anyone else did such a thing.

The reason why I asked is that inspite of regular gravel vacuuming, there's a lot of mulm in the gravel. Will that leech out 'nastiness' or do the plants neutralise that?

My water test results are 'normal' (don't have them to hand at the mo, tho'...)

 

[waterdrop]

The answer to the mulm question is tricky. If you were following the somewhat rare "El Natural" planted tank approach of Diane Walstad and allowing your plants to feed via all the nutrients supplied into the tank from fishfood and water contents, then you might very much desire all that mulm! On the other hand, the normal, average (if there is such a thing) beginner tank, not heavily planted but with gravel or sand and perhaps some nice plants seems to get along best with about what I'd call a 3/4 clean approach (to make up an name.) Doing weekly deep gravel cleans with 25% or more water changes will put most tanks at this sort of "3/4" level, not quite as fastidious perhaps as a planted tank where 10x turnover and powerheads and lots of fussy cleaning and perhaps special filter media additions keep you closer to a sort of "100%" cleaning level. Its my feeling that in this, let's say "average gravel beginner" tank you can let some extra (slight) over-feeding occur and be perfectly comfortable with it because it will just be some extra food for the plants but because of the good gravel-cleaning habits, will not reach a point of fouling your tank in a bad way.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

There is almost never a reason to do a total strip down unless you have some disease in the tank that kils off your fish and that cannot be identified. In that case a strip and sterilize approach might be called for. Otherwise, a gently regular cleaning is all that is ever needed for healthy fish.

 

[B13]

Thanks folks!

When I vaccuum the tank, I generally dig down about an inch into the gravel (my gravel is about three inches deep), give it a good stir and suck up the muck, so that sounds pretty much like Waterdrop's comment. Plus I do a regular 20% water change at the same time.





I dunno what the heck I'd have done without this forum! My fishies and I thank you!!!

 

[OldMan47]

I actually shove the gravel vac all the way to the bottom glass when doing a cleaning on a gravel substrate. The gravel sort of lifts into the tube and all kinds of nastiness go into the bucket with the water. Next move over about a gravel vac width and do it again. It takes me a few gravel cleaning water changes to do the whole tank and by then it is ready again at the place I first started. The tank is never spotless but is always low in mulm build up. The deep cleaning stirs the gravel well and prevents any area of the substrate from ever going anaerobic. In a sand substrate tank, I only vacuum near the surface and clean the surface of visible build ups. My El Natural does not get much in the way of a gravel vac but I do remove what I can occasionally from the substrate surface. As WD said earlier, cleaning in an El Natural is seldom needed and seldom done. In that situation, a small amount of fish food decaying on the tank bottom is considered your friend. I think there are probably as many ways to take care of a tank as there are tanks. I know that my 20 all have distinct variations in how I approach them. All of the methods that are based on sound reasoning seem to work out fine so don't worry too much about the details of my cleaning or anyone else's.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with OM47. My comment about 3/4 cleaning did not at all refer to depth of gravel cleaning. I take my gravel cylinder all the way down to the bottom glass just like OM47 and often feel gratified in doing that when I'm "rewarded" with a healthy cloud of "debris haze" lifting off the disturbed gravel and heading up the gravel cleaning tube and out of the tank.

As OM47 says, every tank has a different situation. One of my own special concerns is having quite low mineral content in my tap water, with my minimal KH hardness being consistently used up during the week and crying out for a large water change by week end to replenish the minerals and bring the pH back up after its gone even more acid. Its only a 28g with fair height and thus the entire substrate can easily be deeply cleaned while doing a 60% water change.

In my opinion, the entire topic of how much a tank gets gravel cleaned and water changed is one area of our aquarium hobby and forum discussion where, by definition almost, there's room for an enormous amount of variation. I suspect there are plenty of times when people who are a little more loose about their maintenance habits (its a chore after all) are running tanks that an experienced aquarist would look at and feel it just needed a bit more frequent and thorough cleaning to be brought up to a healthier running situation.

~~waterdrop~~