Under-gravel Filter

[Bobtastic]

What if it's a reasonably well planted tank? Does gravel vacuuming still need to be as thorough then?

Wouldn't you have problems with the plants roots blocking the outlets/inlets on the UGF tray?

 

[OldMan47]

To answer the first question, a planted tank is more difficult to maintain with a UGF but it still needs to be done as well as you can. the roots can be a bit difficult to work your way around but failure to do so can result in too much mulm being pulled down below the filter plate where it becomes a problem. the slots in a UGF are over the whole surface so a small amount of blockage by plant roots is not really a problem. You use the gravel vac to pick up what you can in terms of detritus and try as hard as you will, it will never be as good as you want it to be. That means that the filter will slowly lose its effectiveness as a biofilter over time. After a few months, maybe as much as a couple of years, it will become as ineffective as a canister filter for biofiltration. After a couple more years it will drop way down to the effectiveness of a large HOB filter and eventually it will get to the point where you do actually need to clean under the filter plate. By then, you are often more than ready to switch to another method or a whole new tank decor so you prepare a new filter by running it in the tank then drain the tank and clean everything properly. If you want to use the UGF again, you do. Otherwise you use that newly established filter to change to something more expensive and needing more attention but not needing a substrate to be disturbed to do a good cleaning. There are as many methods that work for a tank as there are people in the hobby. The filtration method that works for you is only one of the variables, but it is not wrong to be different from the rest of us. I use mostly canister filters and sponge filters but I recognize that there are lots of other methods that do a dandy job if you understand them. I( have used some of those other methods over the last 50 or so years.