After Cycling

T

Temeraire

Betta Owner
Jan 6, 2009
222
0
0
Alright, so I'm not near this point yet, but during my last water change I tried to see how hard it would be to remove fish food (I'm using the fish food fishless cycle method) when I do get to that point. Removing large quantities isn't easy, it just kinda start floating around the tank if you disturb the water/gravel too much. I was only able to remove maybe half of it, and I don't want to have to keep filling the tank to be able to clean it once.

So, I was wondering if I would be able to remove the gravel by hand in small quantities such that I know it has no food on it, and place it in a bucket with old water, and then let the food settle so I could clean the tank. Would this cause any problems?
 
well, this is why the pure ammonia method is better....no mess at the end.

what are you using to clean the tank? what kind of filter is on the tank?

one thing i would recommend in the days leading up to the end of the cycle would be to get some poly-fill (pillow stuffing), shove a handful in the back of the filter, stir up the mess in the tank for a few minutes so the filter catches it, and then toss out the rotty-food-filled fiber, repeating as necessary. a big bag of it is only like $3.
 
I couldn't find pure ammonia for some reason...

The filter is an AQUA-Tech 5-15 power filter. Other than water changes and a siphon I haven't really cleaned the tank, but I do have a scrubby thing I plan to use when I do clean it.

Do you think there would be an issue with my solution to the problem?
 
Well, while trying to remove what you can with siphoning, stir up the water as much as you can. This will cause the tank to become fowled and the filter will pick up a lot of it. You can then clean the filter to remove the particulates. You could also try putting the food in the tank in something that keeps it from becoming a mess.... nylon stalking works well. Hope this helps!
 
do you have a true gravel vac or just tubing? you need something like this:

siphon.jpg
 
I'm just going to double post because that gigantic picture takes up the entire text box...oops. if you're not using an actual gravel cleaner, that's the trouble. while some flakes nearby will get a little stirred up, once you position the vac and stick it into the gravel, ALL the gunk in that spot is removed. once the water is coming through clean again, you move to the next spot. with a 10g tank, pinch the tubing a little to slow the water flow, that will allow you to do more cleaning before the water level drops too low and you have to refill again.
 
misc_hagen_marina_gravel_cleaner.jpg


This one. Moving it around causes the food to float around, the small current that is there already causes some of it to flap around a bit.
 
coach_z said:
How big are the food particles? if they are larger than your fish net you can spend some time scooping aimlessly with your net until you caught a large portion of the food
Click to expand...

Quite a number of them are fairly large, I should probably try that. In fact, the mesh of my net is fairly fine, I could probably get the vast majority this way. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
 
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