full clean

[arangarajan93]

hi guys. I have a 10g fw tank. i want to know when full water change should be performed. If it should be or not , normally. Because i see people who decorate their yanks wonderfully. But it ll be difficult to clean the full tank after a certain period right?! When this should be done? Or it shoudnt be done?!

 

[mfdrookie516]

There's no need IMO. In my 150g mbuna tank, I will periodically move the rock to one side, clean, move it to the other side, clean, then stack it back up. Realistically, if you don't overfeed and do regular water changes and gravel vacs, you shouldn't have any issues at all.

 

[arangarajan93]

What is IMO?

 

[mfdrookie516]

In My Opinion... if you hover over acronyms, it will usually tell you what it says.

 

[BigJim]

+1 You really never need to change all of the water. Weekly 25%-50% water changes are plenty for a healthy tank.

 

[arangarajan93]

+1 You really never need to change all of the water. Weekly 25%-50% water changes are plenty for a healthy tank.

then how can i clean the dirt present under the gravel caused by the fish?

 

[freshwaterfan]

a good gravel vac helps alot with that. You can suck the dirt out of the gravel and while you're at it you'll suck enough water out of the tank to do a solid 25% water change. I gravel vac/25% change every other weekend and my tank has crystal clear water with minimal dirt in the gravel. You'll never keep it totally clean (at least not as far as Ive ever seen) but you'll keep it looking top notch.

P.S.- Im no big time expert but I'd also strongly urge against totally changing water. Last year I had toddler dump an entire jar of fish food in my old 10 gallon tank. Im talking one of them big jars, the water was so filled with it you couldnt even see the back of the tank. I hurriedly scooped out my finned friends with some tank water then proceeded to dump out all the dirty water, cleaned out the entire tank and washed the gravel. Set everything back up, filled it with water and heated/treated it then put them back in thinking they'd be happy to have clean clear water and non icky gravel. They were dead in just over an hour =/. I made a rookie mistake and got rid of all the bacteria in an established tank and basically "restarted" it. After that I always tell anyone with an aquarium to do it 25% or so at a time. It keeps clean water going in while also not shocking your fish with a whole new ecosystem.

 

[BigJim]

+1 for the gravel vac. If you really dig into the gravel with it regularly, you should be able to keep the tank clean without doing huge PWCs. I have a python, but I keep a small gravel vac to clean the detritus off my sand. I get better suction out of the small vac than the 50ft python.

Big water changes really shouldn't hurt anything if you use dechlorinator and match the water temperature to the tank temperature.