I went to the lfs today and they told me to just clean a third of my tank a week. They said I could also clean just a quarter of my tank a week. Apparently they said this will keep nitrates low? I am curious if this is true and if this would also be done for the bare bottom and sand substrate? Today I cleaned my fish tank the way they told me to but I don't know if this will raise nitrates or lower them....
How to properly clean substrate?
- Thread starter Ninjakiller08
- Start date
Moved to setup and filtration.
I imagine you're gonna get a lot of info about this from a lot of people.
Me, I just stir up the substrate as much as I can before a water change and then drain the water. I kind of have to stir it up though because the current blows all the substrate to the right side of the tank and I have to even it back out. It works well for me and I don't have any issues with water quality. My conditions are unusual and unique though.
I imagine you're gonna get a lot of info about this from a lot of people.
Me, I just stir up the substrate as much as I can before a water change and then drain the water. I kind of have to stir it up though because the current blows all the substrate to the right side of the tank and I have to even it back out. It works well for me and I don't have any issues with water quality. My conditions are unusual and unique though.
Are you using sand though or gravel because I am using gravel and I am not sure if this works. Also should i keep filter on when doing this so that it sucks up all debris.
With the substrate being gravel, if it was my tank I would vacuum the whole tank as a lot of waste gets trapped under it and will raise your nitrates, with sand the debris stays on top and gets circulated in the water column for the filters to catch. So with sand it is not needed to vacuum at every water change, hope this helps
I think that advice is geared towards someone who has a small hob filter that doesn't have any bio media. That way you'd keep some bacteria in the gravel that hadn't been vacuumed, avoiding a possible mini cycle.
If you have enough bio media in your filters, there is no reason to only vacuum in 1/3 portions IMO.
If you have enough bio media in your filters, there is no reason to only vacuum in 1/3 portions IMO.
Ok thanks for the help. When I went to the lfs to check my water parameters though everything was good and ph was stable. The only thing that was bad was my nitrates were too high. The lfs guy told me to do this. He said that vacuuming 1/3 would lower nitrates. So I am guessing that is false now. Btw I have a canister filter with a lot of bio-media.
Thanks for the help. Also, is it ever possible to get debris under sand? If so how would you clean it?
Well technically, vacuuming 1/3 would lower nitrates, so it's not false. Just that vacuuming all of the gravel would remove much more waste and nitrates.
Ok so in a 34 gallon what would you recommend me do? I know that in a smaller tank there is less water volume so that means there is less water to dilute all the nitrates, ammonia, nitrite etc. which means that the levels of those will increase much quicker so I am prompted to clean the aquarium much more frequently. Should I vacuum the whole tank once a week, or drain 20% of water say on monday and do a full vacuum on friday?
Kill two birds with one stone and vacuum the tank while doing your water change every week. As for getting the waste from under the gravel, stick the vacuum tube down into the gravel you will be amazed as to what is there. The gravel should be heavy enough to go half way up the tube and fall back down.
