need something to eat decaying plants

[timwag2001]

ok i have a moderately planted tank with not too much room between plants. i get a lot of debris and dead plants that collect between them and my gravel vac doesnt fit in most places. i was condering if there is some kind of plant friendly invert, or fish that would like to help me out with this problem

 

[kangster]

malaysian trumpet snails or ghost shrimps?

 

[timwag2001]

i have mts, not helping. i also have nerite snails (who pay most of their attention to my glass). and i have some amano shrimp in that tank. looking for something a little more aggressive at it. how about corys? i dont know anything about them

 

[black hills tj]

You really shouldn't have much dead plant matter in there.

 

[timwag2001]

it's not like the floor of a forest or something crazy but i do have a bit of matter. especially from my ludwigia repens that is having a bit of an issue after being uprooted trimmed and replanted and i also have some fissidens that kinda decays and regrows around some of my plants

 

[kangster]

yeah...i guess the issue is not finding a aquatic species that will consume the dead plant material but to not have rotting material to begin with...
like tj said...you really shouldnt have that much dead material that some MTS and amano shrimps cant take care of...
i say manual removal is the best way to go...

 

[Ruadh]

I bet if you check your phosphate level, it's really high.
I'm pretty sure that rotting plant material contributes to it.

 

[timwag2001]

phosphates are at 1ppm

 

[Mystery]

Corys will get in there and stir things up even if they don't consume much.

 

[joy13]

Get a turkey baster and suck it out. I don't suggest you go raid the kitchen unless you have a very understanding wife.

 

[mgamer20o0]

there really not anything that will do that. best case is a couple power heads to kick it up to have filters suck it up. if its not one thing on the gravel its another.

 

[neurotik]

I've been wondering this same question myself. I do not have any serious problem at the moment with plant debris in the substrate, but I'm pretty obsessive with keeping everything as neat and clean as possible in all of my tanks. I've heard about the snails, but I have a couple of Clown Loaches in my 55 and I'm pretty sure they would destroy any snails I added, correct? Same with shrimp probably, or the Pictus Cats would snack on them if the loaches didn't.

Any other suggestions, just to help keep things extra clean from one week's cleaning to the next?

 

[Yellow Eye Tang]

Give the MTS a bit of time... they will reproduce like total madness and there will be plenty of them to go around. You may find yourself hunting snails soon.

 

[Purrbox]

I'd recommend going with the turkey baster or a long set of tweezers and manually removing the debris. Adding fish, snails, etc. to remove it will just create more waste that will need to be removed with larger or more frequent water changes.