Which Fish Could I Get To Clean My Sand?

[mattlee]

it seems a few people have got out of bed on the wrong side today....!!!

 

[lljdma06]

OP, What works for me is to take a fine tubing and syphon near the sand surface. You can even swirl the water a bit near the sand. Usually you can pick up debri pretty well that way without picking up much sand. My sand is extremely fine and I do not suck up much when I do this.

Fish do not usually eat waste. Some will eat detrius, but it is usually in the form of decayiing plant matter or animal matter, but not fish waste.

Another thing to do is to stir the sand on occasion. I do this in my planted tank where there is a sand substrate, more so now than syphoning. It will move the debri to the beneath the surface. This works for me because the plants will use the nutrients. MTS will do this as well.

llj

 

[steelhealr]

In my saltwater tank, I insert the gravel vac deep into the substrate and let it rise to nearly the top. I then pinch off the tubing, stopping the vacuum and allow the substrate to cascade back to the tank bottom. The vac water in the column is usually cloudy with poop, detritus etc. When i release the tubing, the 'shmutz' get sucked up leaving the substrate behind.

Hope this helped.

SH

PS...keep to topic. SH

 

[nmonks]

You don't want to "clean" the sand as such. Disturbing sand does more harm than good. Use some burrowing snails (e.g., Clea helena or Melanoides spp.) to expand the aerobic region into the anaerobic region, but otherwise leave the sand alone. Use a turkey baster for spot cleaning and the siphon during water changes to suck out excess detritus.

Also, adding fish to clean a tank isn't going to work anyway. By definition, adding livestock makes a tank dirtier. This applies whether we're talking about solid wastes, ammonia, or even algae. If the substrate is dirty and the tank looks grubby, your mechanical filtration isn't adequate. The Juwel filters are pretty poky in terms of mechanical filtration, so adding a second filter (something about the size of a Fluval 105 or an Eheim 2213) would make a huge difference. Fill the thing with mechanical media and off you go!

Cheers, Neale

 

[Ben M]

hi, i don't think he'll be on the forum now, but i'll tell him all that you have/are going to say.
thanks for the help.

 

[kiriyama]

On the mention/subject of MTS how many would be a suitable number to add to a tank with floor sspace of 39cm x 33cm so roughly 12x12, sand substrate?
Sorry to barge in on the thread but if anyone has any suggestions then it would be much appreciated.....

 

[nmonks]

Add half a dozen and you'll soon have hundreds! Use Clea helena if you don't want so many; they're carnivores and breed much more slowly.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Malt_Vinegar]

Any of the earth-eaters (Geophagus) will pick up, and filter out the sand, this turns over the sand a lot, and can help keep some algea at bay.

I have them in my planted sand filled tank (brasilliensis) and they do a brill job

 

[kiriyama]

Any of the earth-eaters (Geophagus) will pick up, and filter out the sand, this turns over the sand a lot, and can help keep some algea at bay.

I have them in my planted sand filled tank (brasilliensis) and they do a brill job

Really cool fish, shame they would burst the tank I'm setting up, have a ton of MTS in the main tank (guilty of over feeding - sigh!!!), might go for assasins, they don't eat fry do they? will eat fish eggs though? if no snails to munch will thet eat scraps?

 

[oneblondebrow]

As stated you need to get a balance with the amount feeding, I myself still overfeed but find my 3 Peppered cory's eat all the excess flake food from the bottom, I am always scared of under feeding the guy's.