Hi. I have a question... I have always thoroughly vacuumed my gravel every week or so, doing a maybe 40% water change in the process. I've done this for years and everything has been more or less okay. I read an article today on the net that said that over-vacuuming will damage your biological base? The article stated you should only do 1/3 per cleaning. My fish are all pretty big eaters and poopers. Do you think this is true? I've read lots of articles that state that thorough cleaning is important. I don't use any underground filters. Thanks!
Can you over-vacuum gravel?
- Thread starter Jenni
- Start date
It's false. Your gravel will house loads of bacteria that vacuuming can't remove, and your filtration has most of your bacteria in it anyway. You are doing the right thing and helping to keep nitrates low by keeping your gravel as clean as you can.
It's sort of true... but not really. If you have a lot of gunk in your gravel, and it's been accumulating for a while, and one day you suddenly vacuum everything, there will be some bacterial die off, because the gunk you removed has been slowly rotting, releasing ammonia, and the BB colony has been slowly growing to compensate for that extra ammonia. When you remove that source of ammonia, some bacteria will die. However, your fish are still in there, producing ammonia, so enough bacteria remain to handle your fish's bioload (because the bioload is there... I hope this makes sense). So, bacteria will die, but you won't experience an ammonia spike, because only the "extra" bacteria due to the decaying mulm will have died off.
I think that will only affect your cycle if you have a severely under filtered tank.
Although decorations and substrate can house bacteria I don't think you should ever count on them to help filter your tank.
Although decorations and substrate can house bacteria I don't think you should ever count on them to help filter your tank.
Well you just shouldn't take to much water out because then it looses all the biological filtration
moodig;4829961; said:
There is little beneficial bacteria in the water. You can change 100% of the water and lose nearly no bacteria as long as the substrate and filters dont dry out. Some is attached to sides of tank and substrate, most in the filter media.
That's why i use bare bottom in my tanks, makes it easy.