Yet another how often do you thread...

[DN328]

I know there's a lot of threads discussing how often folks do water changes...from everyday to never done it in years (out of laziness or you have a drip system).

My question is how often do people clean the substrate/vacuum the substrate? I'm especially interested in folks that have larger (say, 180+ gallons) tanks. For me, I have a relatively light bio-load in my 260gallon, so I do a 45 - 50% WC and Vacuum every month. But I know this will change when the residents get bigger. I'm already thinking of doing WC twice a month and alternating with vacuuming the sumbstrate.

I know a lot of this is dependment on bio-load and other factors, but share your tank size and vaccum cadence...

 

[mscamp02]

I never do water changes on my 300g or vacuum the sand, the rays stir it up as its only enough to cover about half of the bottom.

 

[spiff44]

1700 gallons


Water changes go hand in hand with canister cleaning- each canister cleaning takes around 300 gallons.. then I’ll let another couple hundred gallons siphon off so I’m doing about a 33% water change. I do this about once a month.


I never vacuum. It’s a sand colored bare bottom.. everything seems to make its way to my pickup on its own or else the fish help move the crap along.

 

[krichardson]

I have a 180 with a fairly decent bio load of large sized fish and I vacuum the gravel every time I do a water change.In fact I see no point in not vacuuming at least some portion of the gravel bottom during a change no matter which size tank you have.

 

[xraycer]

My question is how often do people clean the substrate/vacuum the substrate?

I never vacuum the substrate for my 180. I only have about 1/4" of pfs and my CA/SA constantly stirs up everything, which gets sucked up by one of the 3 canisters filtering the tank.

 

[FreshyFresh]

To the OP, do your nitrates stay low over the course of ~30days? I just don't see how monthly or "never" water changes would ever work long term. Not only will nitrates creep up, but the GH/KH/pH will change drastically over time with all the evaporation and make-up water added.

 

[dan518]

180 gal I do 20% 3 days a week syphon on all of them

 

[Ihsnshaik]

200 gallon every week 20-30 percent water changes. I have less fish now and less bio load. I was doing 40-50 percent a week when I had more fish.

My nitrates is very low I have pothos but I just do it so they can grow faster.

 

[spiff44]

I never do water changes on my 300g or vacuum the sand, the rays stir it up as its only enough to cover about half of the bottom.

How does that work? So what are you doing in lieu of water changes?

 

[DN328]

I have a 180 with a fairly decent bio load of large sized fish and I vacuum the gravel every time I do a water change.In fact I see no point in not vacuuming at least some portion of the gravel bottom during a change no matter which size tank you have.

I agree. The reason I called out larger tanks it typically takes much longer than say a 20 gallon tank. It takes me about 4-5 hours E2E from set-up to clean-up/put stuff away. The majority of the time is from vacuuming and refill.

People may perform less often in larger tanks, was my thought...