How to clean?

[captmicha]

I have a guppy breeder tank that's planted. How am I supossed to clean this thing?

[SftWrmRain]

When I gravel vac, unfortunately a lot of my plants get uprooted, and I end up having to replant. It's annoying, I know.

[jwddboy]

Run a gravel vac over the plants and gravel. If possible, dont have the other end of the siphon too much lower than the base of the gravel vac, this will create less of a suction and help to keep plants rooted.

[captmicha]

Well, what I meant was, how do I not suck up all the fry?

[Blueiz]

What do you mean by clean? As far as gravel vacumming goes, I vaccume around my plants.. I clean the glass as I normal would with an algae scrub pad and do the normal water changes etc.. The debris in the bottom will become fertilizer for the plants. Seeing how it is a breeder tank and you need need extra clean water for fry, you may want to consider having less stuff in it so it is easier to maintain at the levels required for fry..

How to not suck up the fry..you just have to be extra careful.. Drain the water into a bucket and check the bucket for fry before throwing out the old water..

Blue

[Malbri]

ive wondered hte smae thing, I am awaiting swordtail fry

[jwddboy]

oh i see. Well for my fry tanks I use a special mini siphon. It's not too much bigger than an air tube. It creates a very small ammount of suction but enough to pick up debris. If anything IS sucked up, I let it go into the bucket and scoop it out afterwards. Generally I have found fry are able to cope with that quite well. When the fry are all gone i give the tanks a huge gravel vac over and get it ready for a new batch.