FishProfiles.com Message Forums

If you have a really heavily planted, and with fish, including bottom feeders such as cories in there too and also do water changes. Would you need to siphon the substrate or no because of the plants and bottom feeders?

Hi GH, trust me no matter how well planted your tank is you need to do gravel vacs
on at least a semi regular basis.

I thought I knew lots about this hobby until I arrived at this site and then I started
listening to Frank & Keith & LHG & LF & Tetra , the list goes on and on . The one
thing they all stressed and I've found to be absolutely right is there is no substitute
for a solid weekly maintaince program , which includes a good gravel vac of at least
a quarter to a third of the substrate each week .

Just to give you an example , this week I pulled up the rocks in my 60g to scrub some
Algae off the rocks . I thought I would just give the gravel a quick vac at the same time
. The *%$@# that came up was amazing . Considering thats where all my bottom
dwellers hide , it taught me a lesson I should have learned from listening to all of the
above folks .
Long winded answer , but I stress again do not scrimp on this area , you will pay later .

Oh and btw if you knock a few plants in the process , so what, you can always replant

Trust this helps

Garry

Well,

Although I think that gravel vacuuming is a good thing in general, there are some other thoughts to consider:

First and foremost, most people greatly misjudge if their tank is "really heavily planted". If your tank were such then there would be no possibility to gravel vac in the first place and the closest thing one can do is to swish the vac over the plants to pick up some debris. As you ask if you should vac the gravel I assume your tank is not "really heavily planted".

More tricky is the completely lack of vacuuming because there is not much decaying going on and that little is used as ferts and food for fish. This would require a well balanced tank and a great understanding of the things that go on in a tank. I do not know too many people personally that have reached that level!!!

Just some thoughts,

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Siphon, siphon, siphon ...you have nothing to loose and everything to gain, cept maybe like ten minute as week. any ho. bottom feeder are great because they eat alot of missed food. However they and other fish leave enough poop so that it can affect your water quality..
ps. all fish like fresh food so what the harm in siphoning out some of the old rotting food and allow you BD's to scavange for some fresher food (sinking food help so they dont starve).

Yup, the truth be known, people with even heavily planted tanks will have to uproot some plants occassionally and clean patches of substrate, more common though is the occassional need for a breakdown of a tank. Everyone I know from hobbyists to stores who run heavily planted tanks has to breakdown or purge a tank substrate once in a while or bacterial decay eventually gives rise to bacterial diseases and necrotising bacteria. Planted aquaria are not a way to avoid cleaning, and taken as a whole are probably more work. Aquaria are not rivers and lakes, organic detritus will eventually clog them or give rise to disease even if the water quality is testing ok, and the nitrates kept low. The more fish you have, the faster it will happen and so the most successful and longest running planted tanks tend to be minimally stocked with fish , or their owner has a great deal of tweaking, cleaning, and uprooting to do. Every planted tank where the majority of the substrate is clumped together with roots will need an eventual breakdown and thorough clean.

Contrary to popular opinion most peoples planted tanks will not handle all the waste from the fish, plants themselves are in competition with bacteria, fungi, and various protozoa and other small organisms for nutrient, often being dependant in one another, but in the confines of an aquarium, the plants usually over time become overwhelmed by the presence of organic detritus and the massive bacterial culture that helps to process it. Seasonal changes in rainfall, drought, temperature, flow, browsing by fish etc help keep an ecosystem in the wild fluid, and the various species are so interlinked into competition that rarely does one animal or plant , or even bacterial group dominate, but in aquaria where the conditions are if anything far more consistant than nature in average values, its usually bacteria who have the environmental advantage, and eventually they dominate.

A planted aquaria with fish and plants that never requires maintenance would have to be truly vast, and even then the keeper would have to stand in for some of the major events that periodically change the rank dominance among all the species within that aquarium. A complete ecosystem that requires no maintenance in a small body of water is as yet beyond the means of the home aquarist, and will likely remain so for hundreds of years to come.

We just do what we can to keep fish and plants healthy, and sometimes that means recognising that an aquaria is not a complete ecosystem and cleaning when we have to.Im sure we'd like to think we have complete ecosystems in the home,but unfortunately that isnt the truth. Cleaning is I'm afraid, a complete inevitability, and if that means moving plants and fish, thats what ya gotta do. You can choose tough species to help with minimal maintenance, but even keeping an aquarium with nothing but plants in youd eventually have to face some maintenance. Decompositionand plant metabolism as an efficient way of dealing with organic matter only works on the large scale. To date every biome project the world has conceived of for contained ecosystems has failed.There is a minimum scale requirement, and its vast, and dependant on the seasonal changes and interlinked speciation of the planet.

Ironically a lot of people who are not truly experts in maintenance may actually find a heavily planted tank much more difficult to manage for the health of animal species than those who keep aquaria without plants at all. The gaseous requirements of plants in confined circumstances can actually be counterproductive to fish, and extremely encouraging to necrotising bacteria and fungi unless with light feedings and low stocking you deny them the conditions they need to survive. For anyone, particularly newbies to fishkeeping with aspirations of keeping quite a number of fish, and having a good level of environmental enrichment for said fish, its better to plant moderately so that gravel cleaning is not impeded, thus enjoying a small amount of denitrification and some of the plants natural beauty without potentially ever having to facilitate a complete breakdown for which the fish may need to be removed.Put your faith in a good filter over the nutrient processing abilities of plants.

One problem I had a while back with my 10g was blue green algae takeovers of my tank. Finally after much ado what it boiled down to was too much stuff left in the substrate. I ended up totally replacing it and have not had a single problem since.

With the 5ft tank 99% of the plants are Anubias either growing on DW or rocks and the very pld large ones just tied at the base of the plant. Usually twice a year I take out the tall plants at rear of tank and give it a real deep gravel vac. The front is deep gravel vac weekly. I remove the smaller rocks as I go along. I also place the syphon tube down the UGF risers twice a year. Total pull down about every 7-10 years.

Now the Betta tank is totally different there is a space at the front 12" X 1&1/2" which I do weekly for the rest of the tank it is a wave over the plants. The Eheim
Internal filter is over size for the tank and it is cleaned weekly.

This works with my tanks and I have never had a Substrate Bacteria problem. One thing I always add Sera Nitrivic bacteria at every water change this keeps the good bacteria in its natural condition.

Ifyou look in My Profile you can see the tanks are well
filtered and plenty of aeration.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW