Those who are heavily planted / decorated

[meloyelo]

Question to those of you have heavily planted and or decorated tanks. What do you do about vacuuming the bottom of the tank? I have sand as my substrate and am heavily decorated with rocks, fake plants, live plants, etc and I find it really difficult to vacuum around all that stuff in there. I feel like I'm not getting it all removed. Thanks for any advice.

Meloyelo

 

[awilson133]

I just get what I can and if I need to like if that spot hasn't be touched in a while I'll get to it.

 

[Mr.Pleco]

For heavily planted tanks I don't think people vacuum all that much because it messes with the nutrients absorbed by the substrate. I'd double check though because I'm not 100%. I don't vacuum my 150g planted and I don't have problems. I just pick up stuff when I see it, but I also have FloraMax and not sand. My 50g is sand and I don't vacuum it, just mix it up every once in a while.

 

[BlaseMrNiceguy]

With heavily planted tanks all you do is suck the stuff off the top of the substrate never into the substrate as it will mess with the nutrients also you may end up accidentally uprooting plants. As for heavily decorated you will never get everything but if it bothers you every now and then you can move a decoration to clean under it or around it easier then just put it back but if you do just one or two pieces of decor it won't stir too much stuff up.

 

[Cichlid Kid]

In my bigger tanks i use a powerhead thats strategically placed to make debris settle at a spot i can easily vacuum.

 

[meloyelo]

In my bigger tanks i use a powerhead thats strategically placed to make debris settle at a spot i can easily vacuum.

Huh, never thought of something like that. Do you have it lower in the tank or just angled so the current flows a certain way? This is a 55 gal. tank.

Thanks for all the input everyone!

 

[BBradbury]

Vacuuming Heavily P

Question to those of you have heavily planted and or decorated tanks. What do you do about vacuuming the bottom of the tank? I have sand as my substrate and am heavily decorated with rocks, fake plants, live plants, etc and I find it really difficult to vacuum around all that stuff in there. I feel like I'm not getting it all removed. Thanks for any advice.

Meloyelo

Hello m...

I've never vacuumed my planted tanks. You don't want to damage the roots and vacuuming removes nutrients the plants use for food. I just remove and replace half the water in the tanks every week or so to keep the water chemistry stable.

B

 

[digitallinh]

Yeah my 75%+ plant cover tanks pretty much never get a vacuum. Just make sure you have a healthy (read: not explosive) population of MTS.

Sand is an issue sometimes since detritus just floats on top of the sand, but if you have enough plants you can't see it anyway.

 

[Terrance]

If you have decorations with holes and crevices, then its a good idea to take it out of the tank and rinse it every few weeks. If you have fish with high bioload, then do it more frequently. When I take out my driftwood stump for rinsing, I find lots of waste coming out of it.

 

[meloyelo]

Guess I'll just keep on as I have been, cleaning around things as much as possible. I tend to stress over things I really shouldn't. Thanks so much for all the input everyone.