Should I vacuum my substrate ?

[candymancan]

Question, I removed my UGF and all my blue rocks 6 weeks ago and replaced them with Floramax rocks (same stuff as eco complete) and the tank just finished cycling a few days ago.. I haven't touched my gravel in those 6 weeks and I did cycle with my 30 with in the tank so the gravel has built up a decent layer of the normal matter.. I can see it about an inch down in the gravel,my substrate is about 4 inches deep. Should I vacuum the gravel ? Or no ? I was told if you have a heavily planted tank to not vacuum the gravel.

I obviously cant vacuum the gravel where my plants are because I don't want to uproot them but I can remove my driftwood and lava rock and probly vacuum around my red tiger lotus in the front... id say maybe 40% of the gravel I could get too. The vast majority of that would be in the middle of the tank where I have no plants because of my driftwood.

Im just wondering what you guys think because after my tank cycled I noticed my nitrates were at 40-50PPM.. Most of my plants are stem plants anyway

 

[Cactuspixie]

I would personally vacuum the substrate and do a 50% pwc. Just don't vacuum deeply

 

[Rivercats]

It's very common for nitrates to be that high after cycling. A couple large WC's usually bring them down to 20ppm or less. So honestly the nitrates aren't coming from your substrate.

Honestly I never vacuum my substrate in any of my planted tanks. Not ever and some I've run for years. You can if you want but as Pixie said do it lightly staying well away from the plants. All my tanks are planted and with doing a 50% WC weekly my tanks all run with about 10ppm of nitrates. I rarely ever dose nitrates since I run low nitrate higher phosphate tank. One of the biggest culprits of high nitrates in planted tanks is from filters that are not cleaned regularly, especially canister filters.

 

[candymancan]

Yea my filters are basically rotten right now... They are complete mush like old toilet papers in the bowel... I only left em in the HOB because the tank was cyling.. Im thinking of removing them and putting a new filter in there.. If the ammonia goes up a little bit oh well.. But I don't think it will.

 

[Rivercats]

If they are your sole source of BB and there is no actual bio-media in the filter then I strongly suggest leaving some of the old stuff in there when you add the new one. If you don't your tank will actually have to pretty much cycle all over, not just an ammonia spike.