Panque sawdust
- Thread starter Mr Pleco
- Start date
This is one of the articles I read that had me start this discussion.
http://www.otocinclus.com/articles/snails.html
"Snails mainly eat detritus (fish wastes), dying vegetation, and algae."
http://www.otocinclus.com/articles/snails.html
"Snails mainly eat detritus (fish wastes), dying vegetation, and algae."
I don't think they will do much on the sawdust. Even if they do, you'll probably need to cover the substrate with snails for them to be able to keep up with the waste produced by most plecos. Mechanical filtration is still pretty much the only way to attack sawdust poo.
It's actually more than ok. sawdust is wood, just very very small. That means it takes a long long time to break down. It's actually providing a lot more of surface area for additional beneficial bacteria to grow. If you like your water a little softer and on the acidic side, it'll also assist on that.
I used to have a fx5 to take care of the heavy mechanical filtration. After going back to a ehiem 2262, my water has never been clearer. If you follow their direction and use ehiem mech for the first layer, it traps a lot of the sawdust, and actually become more and more efficient at mechanical filtering, and adding a lot more bio filter at the same time. The saw dust stays behind, while the other "crap" just dissolves away. Everytime I clean out the filter, I get at least couple handfuls of sawdust.
There are only benefits for the water quality from the sawdust, it's just not pleasant to look at.
