Cleaning substrate with baby fish present

[AlissasDad]

My substrate is large (.5"-1" stones) and one of the mollies I bought from the LPS just had babies. The babies hide (quite nicely, I might add) in the stones and I'm wondering how to vacuum the stones without sucking up the baby fish. I thought about pantyhose, but then I think I might not get any of the crapola vacuumed up either.

To add another level to this, I just restarted an old tank and I didn't clean anything (dumb!) so the stones are pretty cruddy. And for yet another level, I didn't do a fishless cycle and am basically starting my second week of the cycle. I'm already planning on several PWCs over the next few weeks so the ammonia and nitrites will stay under control. Is there any other concern with dirty substrate? I read another post that said not to vacuum during the cycle, which is ok, but then I still need a vacuum method after the cycle.

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

Well dirty as in decaying stuff= ammonia basically.

As for the fry, just try to watch out for them, and check the bucket also to see if you sucked any up. Otherwise I would not worry about it as you will soon have more fry than you know what to do with and also they are just adding to the ammonia/cycling issues you are going to be involved in.

Best of luck, do lots of water changes, either daily or large % every couple days.

 

[AlissasDad]

Well dirty as in decaying stuff= ammonia basically.

As for the fry, just try to watch out for them, and check the bucket also to see if you sucked any up. Otherwise I would not worry about it as you will soon have more fry than you know what to do with and also they are just adding to the ammonia/cycling issues you are going to be involved in.

Best of luck, do lots of water changes, either daily or large % every couple days.

I'm already geared up for 20%+ every day based on my readings.

I guess anything organic will eventually decay and whatever is left over won't be producing any ammonia or otherwise be harmful to the biology of the tank, is that right?

 

[JohnPaul]

The only way to do it would be to gravel vac as normal (into a bucket), then when you are done wait a few minutes and then any fry you've sucked up should be swimming around in the bucket. Net them out and back into your tank before disposing of the contents of the bucket.

 

[Purrbox]

You might try using some airline attached to a piece of rigid airling tubing. The smaller diameter will make it harder to suck up the fry.

 

[meegosh]

There was another similar post about shrimp being sucked up, I think it was bsp who brought up using a screen from a window. Do your PWC as normal, into a bucket, dump the bucket into another bucket but place the screen over the second bucket. Once you dump the water through the screen, into the bucket you can grab the fry/shrimp that are on the screen.

 

[AlissasDad]

Both good ideas.
Thanks!