[jsoong]

I don't think you need to do a full tank tear down once a year with good maintanance. You can practically go forever in well maintained setup. What you do is fix a section of the tank at a time through out the life of the tank so it never get bad enough to require a total teardown.

I normally do a deep clean of the tank every week with pwc, but only a 1/4 of the tank at a time. This keeps the tank from collecting too much gunk overtime. <Also it is planted, so I have to leave some gunk for the plants!> Since goldies make a lot more waste than tropicals, you can prob get by with less in a tropical tank. But once a week is an easy schedule to follow.