Vacuum your substrate or not
- Thread starter Silverni2
- Start date
Always clean your sand and gravel !! Fish sh*t and left over food is down there and will mess up your water quality and raise everything you don't want high !! If you can't reach in the back of your tank use power heads to move the bad stuff in front of your tank so u can get it out easier ...
Our tank is 55g.
I only vacuum the tank (very lightly if so) if there is a build up of dirt/detritus due to lack of proper flow or critter clean up to an area (clean up crew i.e. nassarius snails usually take care of that stuff)
This means it is very rare for me to do so.
For example, someone grossly overfed the fish last friday and there were tons of freeze dried krill hanging out in the tank by time I was able to clean it out.
In addition to netting it out, since i saw a bunch laying at the bottom, I decided to do a vacuum clean.
First one in a year!
I only do water changes every few months, and take about 5g out.
I usually just replace what has evaporated.
The tank only houses fish, snails, macro and live rock. In the past with the same methods, we had softies and LPS. They did well until the lights went out for a week
I only vacuum the tank (very lightly if so) if there is a build up of dirt/detritus due to lack of proper flow or critter clean up to an area (clean up crew i.e. nassarius snails usually take care of that stuff)
This means it is very rare for me to do so.
For example, someone grossly overfed the fish last friday and there were tons of freeze dried krill hanging out in the tank by time I was able to clean it out.
In addition to netting it out, since i saw a bunch laying at the bottom, I decided to do a vacuum clean.
First one in a year!
I only do water changes every few months, and take about 5g out.
I usually just replace what has evaporated.
The tank only houses fish, snails, macro and live rock. In the past with the same methods, we had softies and LPS. They did well until the lights went out for a week
- Location
- Franklin Square, NY
I do 10% of the total water volumn per week and I only vacuum the sand once in awhile because I will removing the good as well as the bad.
+1
If you vacuum then you are removing all the biota that would degrade all that stuff. I never vacuum and occasionally spot clean maybe twice a year.
- Location
- Staten Island
+1 I keep my tank barebottom for that exact reason it's very easy to clean. I have no sand storms or any other crap to deal with just suck out all the particles off the glass and the tank is good to go. I also don't need to do water changes very often because there is no buildup due to sand holding in toxins.
- Location
- Flushing, NY
I never vacuumed my sand. I have sugar sized sand.
If you have gravel type/crush coral, I would vacuum it though
If you have gravel type/crush coral, I would vacuum it though
- Location
- NY
Chris Jury
Experienced Reefer
- Location
- Kaneohe, HI
+1 what Russ said. Preferably, I'd use a small to medium grain sand and essentially not touch it, or else I'd use a very thin layer of large grain sand and blast/vacuum the heck out of it all the time (or go barebottom). Any of these can work, but sand beds used as biofilters (i.e., 1st option) work best IME.
cj
cj
- Location
- Westchester
No. I have a small freshwater planted tank that I vacuum every water change, but never in my reef.
- Location
- Huntington
Pretty much all of the advise above is good with the caveat that if you are going to clean the sand bed in a shallow bed system I always recommend dividing the bed into either quarters or smaller sections and only cleaning a single section at a time. That allows whatever beneficial organisms you remove from the one area to repopulate without creating a huge deficit that would cause issues in the tank.
It really comes down to the type of system you have. A DSB system I wouldn't disturb. A shallower system I would clean periodically but if you have enough flow in the tank all that waste should be kept in suspension so it can be removed by the overflow and subsequent filtration.
It really comes down to the type of system you have. A DSB system I wouldn't disturb. A shallower system I would clean periodically but if you have enough flow in the tank all that waste should be kept in suspension so it can be removed by the overflow and subsequent filtration.
My tank is a 120 48x24x24 with an inch of crushed coral, I do have a 30 gallon breeder with a 5-6 dsb for a fug. In the past i have vacuumed every time I did a water change 20% every 2 weeks. I'm going to change that going with the consensus here and almost never vacuum. My only concern is my flow or drainage gph through the tank is not great but I do have lots of movement with my mp40( I'm going to add another)!
Thanks for all the responses and great advice
Thanks for all the responses and great advice
- Location
- LONG ISLAND
I don't vacuum - i love my bacteria
Barrie I have not considered switching until you just mentioned it. Problem is I just upgraded from a 90g to this current 120g and I just don't have it in me to start tearing up again. I do see your point about sand Vs cc, I may do what lfs guy said a
and do very minimal strategic vacuuming.
Thanks for the heads up
and do very minimal strategic vacuuming.
Thanks for the heads up
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