Bare bottom tank questions

[aykinhk]

Hi everyone, I just bought a 150 gallon tank with bare bottom set up now, Is anyone here having a bare bottom tank as well and any suggestions how to always kep the bottoms clean all the time .
I've tried to use a wave maker to blow all dirty to the intake pipe
However the pipe wasn't long enough to the lower bottom
How much power wave maker should I used or any other suggestions
Thanks

 

[dr exum]

I’ve got one of these (aqua top ph 35) on my 150... seems to push the water...

But ya, I see stuff on the bottom of my bare bottom QT tank...

 

[esoxlucius]

Hi everyone, I just bought a 150 gallon tank with bare bottom set up now, Is anyone here having a bare bottom tank as well and any suggestions how to always kep the bottoms clean all the time .
I've tried to use a wave maker to blow all dirty to the intake pipe
However the pipe wasn't long enough to the lower bottom
How much power wave maker should I used or any other suggestions
Thanks

If you get a bit creative and adjust the height of the "pipe" so it is sucking from the bottom and not mid water, then that would go a long way to solving your problem. You just need to tweak your powerhead placement then to maximise the waste removal.

A good tip. If you have your powerhead on a timer be sure to time it to be off at feeding times. Otherwise any sinking food will also get sucked into your filter before your fish have eaten it all.

 

[aykinhk]

If you get a bit creative and adjust the height of the "pipe" so it is sucking from the bottom and not mid water, then that would go a long way to solving your problem. You just need to tweak your powerhead placement then to maximise the waste removal.

A good tip. If you have your powerhead on a timer be sure to time it to be off at feeding times. Otherwise any sinking food will also get sucked into your filter before your fish have eaten it all.

Thanks so much
Thinking join a PVC pipe to extend the length of the intake , but will that effect the suction power of the filter?? Or not really

 

[esoxlucius]

Thanks so much
Thinking join a PVC pipe to extend the length of the intake , but will that effect the suction power of the filter?? Or not really

If you have a good sized filter with turnover specified for a 150g then suction shouldn't be an issue. Couple that with a good powerhead (or two), and correct placement of said powerheads(s), your tank should be spotless.

It only starts to get problematic when you decide you've had enough of the bare look and start adding substrate and decor. Then you can end up with dead spots where waste will collect and you are back to square one, unless you reposition your powerheads again.

Note. It's great having a spotless tank but don't forget that all that crud is still in your system, unless you clean your filter regularly.

Good luck.

 

[duanes]

Note. It's great having a spotless tank but don't forget that all that crud is still in your system, unless you clean your filter regularly.

Good luck.

Agree, and it seems most aquarists understandably seem to get hung up on what they can see, where its really what you "can't" see that can be the most problematic. A few turds are really not as important to the health of a system than 30 extra ppm of this or that nutrient such as nitrate.
And one other thing to consider with bare tanks, is that most of your biofiltration is obviously located in the filter (as opposed to tanks with substrate, where a good portion of beneficial bacteria resides in the tank itself).
If you have an extended power outage, or pump failure, in a bare tank, biofiltration almost immediately halts, whereas the larger populations of bacteria living in a tank with substrate, plants, and plenty of decor does not deteriorate so quickly.
And if your benificals are in a pressurized system with no access to atmospheric oxygen, that can also can go anaerobic very quickly.

 

[pacu mom]

Extending the uptakes to just off the floor in the areas of the tank where debris tends to accumulate works well for us. I call them "poop suckers" The feces and debris scuttle across the floor of the tank and is removed. No using a powerhead to get the debris in the water column to get removed. I like poop suckers so well, they will be the only "decoration" in the big tank. Here are the uptakes and returns for our mechanical filtration:




No concerns about die off of beneficial bacteria in our substrate-free system. We used to add more water to the tank to submerge the bioballs in the wet/dry filter. That worked OK if we were home when the power went out. BUT what would happen if we were not at home during a power outage?


This is piece of mind for us...no worry about beneficial bacteria die off, no scrambling around to throw battery powered air pumps in the tank... Business as usual for the tank, all day every day.