How often do you siphon the botom of your aquarium?

[kostasonia]

Please specify also

* the type of sand, gravel etc you have,
* if you have many objects like rocks etc,
* if you have many plants

 

[flushingfish]

standard aquarium gravel
driftwood, medium planted
but I vacuum the best I can.

 

[hamburgler]

Once a week with the black moon sand. I get what i can with all the rockwork , once a month i take it all apart and get under the rocks. Its an african cichlid setup.

 

[gu2high]

I can't vote, I do it every two days. Do 25-30% of water change at the same time.

 

[bsmith782]

I siphon the gravel whenever I do pwc's 1X weekly
pea gravel sized sub.
lot's of driftwood & plants.

 

[JDogg]

i do not really siphon the gravel... i have a planted tank with 50/50 mix of Eco-Compleat and small gravel. i just wave the python over the gravel to suck up loose stuff on the surface...

 

[O ALX O]

I have a mixture of aragonite with black sand.
Approximately 150# of lava rock.
Zero on the plants.
I do pwc's once a week but only vac the sand once a month.

 

[Shelby_Tempo_GT]

I can't vote, I do it every two days. Do 25-30% of water change at the same time.

a 30% water change every 2 days?

Isn't that a little excessive?

 

[plecoperson]

1x week
1/8-ish inch Red Flint gravel
Driftwood w/plants tied on, which I move and vacuum underneath

 

[rich311k]

I never vacuum the gravel, the tank is densely planted and I can't really see the gravel from the top.

 

[theotheragentm]

How large are your tanks and what bioload would you say you have on these tanks? Is once a week normal? I'm way behind then. Can someone explain the process to me that they use? Maybe I'm doing it the hard way, which makes me not want to do it as often. Any special tools?

 

[jamesrm]

Once or twice per week is normal. Most people live by the "Syphon". Its basically a long snake that attaches to your hose pipe or sink. One setting creates a vacuume that drains your tank, the other setting will send water down the snake, filling it back up

 

[lovemybarbs]

I find where my pleco hangs out gets nasty, plus algae wafers are filthy, so I syphon with every water change, once a week.

Gravel bottom

Very lightly planted.

 

[Burks]

I just siphon using an air line tube every so often. Mainly used to clean the "feeding grounds" area.

Other than that I don't siphon heavily.

 

[shayfish]

My tank is moderately planted, but there's a huge root network under there, so a thorough vacuum is quite tough. I can get in the corners a bit and under some of the decorative rocks. Substrate is Flourite gravel mix.

 

[hsherman1986]

depends on which tank. My 55g gets a good gravel vac every 2 weeks. My fry tank gets a good gravel vac once a week. my goldfish are really messy, so they get a good gravel vac once every 2-3 days, along with a 50% water change (three of them in a 10g long story, don't ask.), and I still don't feel like that is enough for them.

 

[flyjawn]

i do a light vacuum of the front of my tank once a week with PWC's. my substrate is very fine gravel and the tank the getting close to being heavily planted. there are only small areas where gravel is visible. the rest is plants, drfitwood and rocks. i do notice that one corner of the tank gets grungier than the rest so i pay more attention to vacuuming there.

 

[JRagg]

I PWC weekly (most of the time), but I never siphon the gravel. My tank is moderately planted, so all of that good stuff you guys siphon up is fertilizer for me. I leave rotting food there too (unless it starts getting fuzzy).

 

[SHIFT_Unique]

no syphon for me. lots of plants and driftwood

 

[bsmith782]

I dont know if you have any cories J but the rotting stuff in the substrate can cause a nasty bacterial infection resulting in barbel loss, or even death. I wasnt aware of this fact untill I posted in a similar thread to this in a different forum.

B