Tank minimum maintenance, practical and inexpensive

KO Lo

KO Lo

AC Members
Jun 23, 2006
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Dear all,

Fish tank configuration/arrangement.
Any ideas or well known techniques that requires only very little maintenance to have crystal clear water and of course best for fish.

Please describe :
Tank size
Filters use
Rock, sand, plants or any stuff that contributed.
How do you configure/arrange it.
Maintenance schedule (how often do you clean or remove)

Thank you all in advance
:)
 
Turkey baster! 1.99 at Walmart. I have a gravel vac but it's hard to use. I think I'm sorta getting the hang of it, but I hate seeing feces or debris at the bottom of my tank. As a sort of touch up cleaning I use a turkey baster to suck up (mostly feces from the pleco). It spot cleans great and is easy to use! I can't take credit for this idea--read it on some website (not this one) but it truly has made maintenance easier for me.
 
low maintenance would be a planted tank, using soil based substrtae.
get some algae eater crew, strong plants. when you use soil based substrate, you dont wanna vacuum, so there goes one of your maintenance.
ive kept a heavily planted tank for about 3 month, no water changes, just kept on adding freshwater. no filter too. it gets rather boring tho.

maintenance is what makes this hobby so much fun.
wel at least to me.
 
Change the water 20% once a week, change the filters monthly, this would be the bare minimum amount of maintenance I would suggest, for a properly stocked tank with fake plants and gravel
Gravel cleaning can be reduced by using a liquid additive that digests waste, but I don't use that myself.
I only clean my gravel when it's really dirty.
 
Skidood said:
Change the water 20% once a week, change the filters monthly, this would be the bare minimum amount of maintenance I would suggest, for a properly stocked tank with fake plants and gravel
Gravel cleaning can be reduced by using a liquid additive that digests waste, but I don't use that myself.
I only clean my gravel when it's really dirty.
Click to expand...

Anyone uses liquid additive? safe?
 
Best not to use chemicals if it can be avoided. There always seems to be some side effect. If you have a tank without real plants you can probably get away with the water change with a gravel vac once a month if you keep the fish load light. If you have a planted tank with a substrate such as eco-complete then you can skip the gravel vac as it will not be needed. Do the water changes though about once a week to keep your water peremeters in check.

Marinemom
 
Marinemom said:
If Best not to use chemicals if it can be avoided. There always seems to be some side effect. if you have a tank without real plants you can probably get away with the water change with a gravel vac once a month if you keep the fish load light. If you have a planted tank with a substrate such as eco-complete then you can skip the gravel vac as it will not be needed. Do the water changes though about once a week to keep your water peremeters in check.

Marinemom
Click to expand...

do you mean with real plants?
i dont see how you can avoid water changes when you have fake plants.
 
Well.. from the replies, to have less maintenance set up there are 2 ways.
Rallysman - More engineering, good system, but need a lot of customization.
misopeenut - Natural, very economical, would have fun in trimming the plants.

Any more suggestions are most welcome..!
 
misopeenut said:
low maintenance would be a planted tank, using soil based substrtae.
get some algae eater crew, strong plants. when you use soil based substrate, you dont wanna vacuum, so there goes one of your maintenance.
ive kept a heavily planted tank for about 3 month, no water changes, just kept on adding freshwater. no filter too. it gets rather boring tho.

maintenance is what makes this hobby so much fun.
wel at least to me.
Click to expand...

sorry for a slight thread jack

but I'm curious..there seems to be different trains of thought with planted tanks.

I am gathering there are the low maint tanks with soil etc no added ferts?? correct?

the other train of thought is heavily planted tons of light lots of ferts with CO2 and 50% weekely waterchanges.


I have tanks near the middle..lots of plants some artificial light some filtered sun..soil/laterite sub no co2, light vacs.weekly 30% water changes(sometime twice a weekif I don't vac the sud.)
 
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