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when you plant real plants in your aquarium then how do you exactly clean your aquarium?

when i clean my aquarium i take all my plastic plants out and then use the syphon to dig in the gravel to clean out the poop. i was wondering because i might want to someday switch it to all real plants.

would it hurt the fish if i were to buy new gravel and take the fish out and clean out all the old gravel and dump the new stuff in after it has been cleaned and then put plants in and put the fish back into the tank. then i would slowly add real plants to my tank.

if anyone knows how to do this or has done it before then please let me know. i am not even sure i am going to do this anyone, i would have to get my parents approval and get the $$$.

if anybody has any other suggestions then i could use them.


[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-07-15 18:08][/span]

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-07-17 20:55][/span]

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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Removing the old gravel would remove all your bacteria and restart the cycle.

2 suggestions for you.

1 - remove all fish change gravel and cycle your tank before adding any fish back in. Only good if you have somewhere for the fish to go ofcourse.

2 - remove a small amount of gravel and replace with new gravel. Put old gravel in a mesh bag and leave in tank so not to remove bacteria. Slowly swop the gravel over and this should give time for new bateria to build up in new gravel and stop your tank from cycling again.

You don't have to take out existing gravel to have plants. You might just want to add some laterite, to provide iron for the plants. First, though, make sure you have the proper lighting for the plants you want. 1 to 3 watts of flourescent light per gallon of water is the usual range found, but some plants must have the higher wattage to do well. Also, the lights should be a 'full spectrum' or 'daylight' color temperature. I'd suggest to start reading through the posts in the plants forum to learn more; they've got a number of very knowledgable people who can help you out. Welcome to the Green side!

i was going to remove the gravel because it is blue, green and bright pink and replace it with more of organic looking gravel but it might look cool with the colored gravel too, so i think i will keep it.

my light is a 15 watt bulb and my tank is 20 gallons and the light is flourescent. will this work???

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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in my experence, you want to add many plant at once. When I first started planting my tanks I added only a few plants at a time, they got black beard algea on them and had to be replaced, after a few trys and a LFS person I added all the plants I wanted at once, and they are doing great now. I have a moderaly planted tank.
hope this helps

is it ok if i were to plant real plants in with fake plants??? because i have a lot of fake plants and i just bought another today and a rock ornament to put in my tank to make it look more real.

also when you buy plants and they come in the little pot things is it better to leave them in the pot or take them out of it???

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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When you clean your aquarium you shouldn't "dig in the gravel to clean out the poop", as this will also decimate your beneficial bacteria colony in the substrate. You should just skim the surface of the gravel and leave everything else.
You don't have to change anything with regards to the gravel. I keep my plants in plain old aquarium gravel. Although you'd prob have better growth with a nutrient rich substrate.
With that lighting you'll be extremely limited in plant options, not many plants will last very long in such low light conditions.
You can keep real plants with fake plants, the only prob with that is that it'll be obvious which are real and which are fake.
When you get a live plant in a pot, take it out of the pot, remove the wool from the roots, and plant them in the substrate.
You know you're going to have to add fertilizers right?

fertilizers, as in what??? because i am not even really sure i am going to be able to keep up with this plant thing and then they will just die.

maybe i will just wait until i am older and get a really big aquarium like the 125 gallon in my LFS then i can spend a lot of time on it even though i put a lot of effort in my 20 gallon now.

well i thought that i would at least look around and see what i would be getting into with real plants. i am pretty good with fake plants and making my tank look natural.

but who knows maybe i will still do plants starting like next summer or something when i know a lot about plants!!!

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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I have changed the gravel with the fish in it before. The only problem is that I think I stressed some of the more timid tetras and they ended up with ich. I guess it couldn't have been any worse then what I did recently while transporting my tanks to the basement though. I kept my fish and plants in buckets while I transported everthing to a new tank.

I didn't notice any ammonia spikes or cycling. My filter had an established colony and I didn't change the water while changing the gravel.

You can start out with a small amount of fast growing plants. They will grow like mad if you start them with good lighting and the right amount of fert.. My 20 long mostly has floating plants in it with 30 watts if light and so far it stays pretty nice.

If you have real enough looking plants and you still like the way they look, keep them and mix. nothing wrong with that. You'll probably end up just having all live ones soon enough.