Weekly Maintenance

[Dan-CR4]

a full valet

consisitng of change water 50%, clean glass and internal piping, substrate vac, clean filter & change the co2 drop checkers, takes me about 60 minutes, less if not cleaning filter and piping. thats based based on my 266 litre tank

 

[Aqua Tom]

1 hour, that includes, water change + sand vac, Glass cleaning & pruning of plants, cleaning of light tubes & reflectors, change reagent in drop checker. Add another 20 mins to that if I do filter maintenance as well.

Tom

 

[micknat]

i bought a cheap gravel cleaner and instead of just sucking the crud from the bottom it took out nearly all the water in the tank, whats an good way of cleaning the gravel?

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

What did you think would happen? Haha

It's supposed to remove the water, you just move it around sucking up the muck at the same time as your water change. If you don't want to remove any water there are battery operated gravel vacs available but they aren't very good

 

[Tizer]

2 minutes to stuff the hose in and start siphoning out, 2 mins to plug hose into tap and refill. I set a 30 min alarm on the cooker and go do other stuff while it fills up. I rarely "vac" the substrate and i never clean the glass. If i clean the filters then that usually takes 5-10 mins each. Cutting up some polishing pad wool tends to take the most time.

 

[Gilli]

I have a 250 L 4 foot tank and it only takes me less than half an hour! I take everything out bar the plants, scrub the glass and gravel vac. My secert is I bought a long length of tube off ebay and replaced it with the shorter one on my gravel vac. Now when I gravel vac the other end goes straight into the loo!

 

[Moby-Krib]

Just one tank or all of em?
Example: one 55 gal 15min tops including cleaning the glass. Large 8"x4" piece of plexi glass used like an oversize credit card to scrape, garden hose to flowerbed during drain, same size hose to refill.
I normally am draining and refilling another tank at same time. record = 4 tanks simultaneously. It has happened that a tank over filled... got distracted.

fish are fine after I'm done.. staying out of the way like fish do the rest of the time LOL

Should add that I do spot clean with a battery powered vac that returns the water to tank after anytime i see a buildup.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

It can easily take upto 2 hours to water change my 5x2x2, because I am carrying water from our upstairs flat down to the garage. Having said that, I recently bought two 30-40l containers (that were only advertised as 25l each), which should save time because they hold far more than my two fish buckets that totalled 25l... Albeit carrying 60-80l for ~30 seconds each time is not for the feint hearted (posties regularly carried ~20Kg red pouches until the recent revisions happening around the country)!

 

[Tizer]

It can easily take upto 2 hours to water change my 5x2x2, because I am carrying water from our upstairs flat down to the garage. Having said that, I recently bought two 30-40l containers (that were only advertised as 25l each), which should save time because they hold far more than my two fish buckets that totalled 25l... Albeit carrying 60-80l for ~30 seconds each time is not for the feint hearted (posties regularly carried ~20Kg red pouches until the recent revisions happening around the country)!

cant hose it down?

That would drive me nuts!

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

It can easily take upto 2 hours to water change my 5x2x2, because I am carrying water from our upstairs flat down to the garage. Having said that, I recently bought two 30-40l containers (that were only advertised as 25l each), which should save time because they hold far more than my two fish buckets that totalled 25l... Albeit carrying 60-80l for ~30 seconds each time is not for the feint hearted (posties regularly carried ~20Kg red pouches until the recent revisions happening around the country)!

cant hose it down?

That would drive me nuts!

I've been contemplating a hose, tap adapter and possibly a 200+ litre water saver container for months, I could then use the FX5 intake to draw the new water into the tank... The problem is cash, money has been extremely tight for the last year, like it has for many people in this financial crisis. ~£100 on buying this gear would be a massive outlay above and beyond paying the bills, its why I have not bought a big group of African midwater fish (Pareutopius buffei/debauwi or Brycinus longipinnis etc.) for months while seeing them online in stock.