dirty plants

[sbundy]

hello

my aquarium has couple fake plants. every time i do a water change and move the plants in the water , it makes a mess in my tank. small particules all around the aquarium. They r big plants and seems over the years have absorbed all the poop and food that is left there. Should i remove the plants or is that part of their system they need to survive. if i dont touch plants its all good but as soon as they r touched they cause a huge mess in the water wich clears up after an hour or so....

thanks

[theotheragentm]

That's strange that the debris seems to be loose. I would try vacuuming the plants before getting into anything else. If it doesn't come off without touching it, you may want to pull the plants out once in a while and wipe them down with a paper towel. I would use old tank water as to try to preserve any kind of bacteria that may be built up on the surface. If there is that much debris built up in the substrate and plants, you may want to do two water changes on two consecutive days to clean it up and then keep water changes and vacuuming more frequent.

[Zagz]

I had the same problem with larger fake plants in my tank. Vaccum them first as mentioned and keep an eye on your parameters.

[tropicfishman]

theres away around the whole mess completely but it has its draw backs. When I was using fake plants I hated them for that very reason and the fact they always end up floating up to the top if a fish hits them. the problem is the crappy plastic trays on the bottom of them. what I do is pull the tray off and throw it away. then I take standard airline tubing suction cups that have the little clips on them and remove the clips. Where the clip was at in the suction cup I take a sharp instruement and poke a hole somewhat smaller than the stem at the bottom of the fake plant. with a little wiggling and twisting the plant slides down in the suction cup. now simply move back some gravel so you can see the bottom glass and press it down on there. now yor plants won't ever float up and theres no trya to collect debris in, now you can do a gravel sweep and not worry abotu anything. the only bad part is its sometimes tricky to get the plants back off the glass if you ever need to clean them or move them. you can also try sweeping down inside the gravel very lightly and lettin the siphon suck the pooh outta the tray itself if you don't like the idea of the suction cups. HTH