Plain or Decorated Tank is cleaner and easier to keep?

[pacu mom]

i removed all the gravel and decorations .. i'm not planing to put any sand or anything else cause i have a problem ... my base of the tank is so dirty with all the dirt! why can't my external fliter wont suck it up?!

Since you have a bare floor, why don't you put an extension to your uptake....get tubing/hose and put it just off the floor. Try to place it were the dirt accumulates. Here's one of my "poop suckers":

It works very well, and in the 5 1/2 years the 300 gallon tank has been running, there has been nothing to vacuum out. Since I posted about my poop suckers several years ago, others have tried it on their bare floor tanks and it's worked for them.

If this doesn't work for you, you may be overstocked or just need more filtration. The kind of fish you keep in there can also make a big difference. For instance, large plecos and oscars are real poop machines. BTW, we used to have two large plecos and two oscars in the tank (they passed away), and there was still nothing to vacuum out of the tank.

Depending on what kind of filter you have, you can make an extended tube uptake out of pipe or hose. Love poop suckers so much, we're putting six or seven on our large tank when we set it up. I'm not into vacuuming poop out of tanks, and I'd rather feces and debris be sucked right off the floor than be smooshed and broken up in the water and then removed by the filter.

 

[Ruii]

Since you have a bare floor, why don't you put an extension to your uptake....get tubing/hose and put it just off the floor. Try to place it were the dirt accumulates. Here's one of my "poop suckers":

well i put a weird thing at the end so that the guppies i used to feed my fishes wont get sucked in.. and when i put that it wont really suck the dirt anymore

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

Powerhead at the bottom, pushing water and any dirt along to the intake of your filter.

 

[3dees]

use the extension only if going bare bottom. otherwise you will suck up sand into your filter. you can change the gravel without removing the fish. it won't hurt them. just go slow and turn your pumps off. sand is very easy to clean because you can see where all the crap collects. I only have floating plants so I have about 1/2" of sand. I don't remove my wood or anything. takes me about 40 min. to do a 60% wc. it's a bit of a pain to get my hand thru all the wood but I just don't like bb tanks. I don't use any power heads (discus don't like current) so the waste just sits on the bottom. not a problem with enough wc's and I clean my filters about once every six months. my nitratre are never over 5ppm.

 

[Ruii]

Wow can I conect powerhead to my external pump?

 

[chodubhagat]

man its soo difficult deciding between a planted or bare bottom tank

 

[convict360]

planted would help with your nitrates, and look good too.