How do you clean substrate in a mbuna tank?

efors

efors

AC Members
Jun 17, 2008
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San Juan, Puerto Rico
Hello!
I suppose it depends on the type of substrate (sand, gravel or crushed coral). My tank's substrate is an EC cichlid substrate that is not gravel, nor the salt and pepper sand; but the one that looks like very fine crushed coral with light brown particles of the same size (see below). Would you clean it using a vacuum and going deep into the substrate or just siphoning the wastes that are on the substrate's surface? I'm also worried about the harmful gases that can get trapped into the substrate. How do you handle all this?
Thanks in advance for your responses!

Mi Pecera 003.jpg
 
you can still vacuum it but be careful as to not pull the sand into the tube i recommend using a gravel vac instead of a faucet vac due to the sand loss and plus if you do this in a bucket you can always add the sand back when filling back up,also you dont have to go deep and to avoid that gas build up issue you must stir the sand aye and really get under rocks and such or you could find a ammonia spike in the making, good luck my friend..
 
you can stir the substrate with chopsticks :D
 
Just skim the top with the gravel vac. You could slot the end of the tube like fork tines to poke the substrate as you go or attach chop sticks to it.
 
I use a larger grain sand, so it vacs up similar to gravel. vac as normal turning the sand over........:goldfish:
 
stir it with your hand to remove some kind of gas bubbles over something like that then vacuum the waste
 
I rarely make any attempt at seriously vacuuming my sand. I skim the surface to pick up any larger debris and mulm, and every other week while pruning I do enough stirring and digging to prevent gas deposits. I would be more worried about stirring up the sand and allowing debris to be covered back up. Most debris should remain on the surface of the sand, making it preferable to gravel in that waste doesn't easily settle into sand the way it does gravel.
 
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