cleaning problems

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bls5301

AC Members
Jul 4, 2010
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Hey guys,
So when i set up my tank for the first time i was told gravel was good for african cichlids so i bought a bunch of black gravel. I was doing my weekly water change the other day and i vacuumed the gravel. It seemed like there was ALOT of debris and nasty junk coming up. Is this bad? I keep thinking to myself that i shouldve just gotten sand instead but i dont know how to clean sand.
 
how long did you go in between gravel vacuuming? and are your filters strong enough to pick up the detritus and poop? your filter intakes may also be too far up to catch anything, or the way you have the input and outputs positioned, the water flow in the tank may be moving the poop away from the intakes.

as far as cleaning sand, the poop sits on top of the sand and you just need to swirl your gravel vac tube around in a lil circle and the current will make the poop rise up a lil. this way you suck up the poop without sucking up sand. you will suck up a little bit of sand each time, but that's pretty much inevitable.

stir your sand up a bit at a time to keep anaerobic areas from forming.
 
yea my hob filter is only about 3/4 of the way down the tank and its dying which is why im looking into canister filters (you commented on that thread to :) ) I didnt have a gravel vac for the first four weeks of my fish being in the tank, i normally would do vacuuming bi-weekly.
 
I wouldn't go more than once/week for vacuuming and water changes. Sand isn't too hard to keep clean it just takes some technique :)
 
Okay so if you were to start a tank right now with cichlids would you use sand or gravel?
 
I use sand in all of my setups but for you to see that dark gunk when you vac the gravel is pretty much you will see all of the time just as long as you are doing the water changes and vac is what counts
 
I think i want to use sand instead, the problem is i dont have somewhere to hold the fish while i change out the gravel and replace it with sand, can the fish stay in the tank while i change it? And should i keep a few little mesh bags of the gravel in there for a few days till everything is normal?
 
Yes you can leave the fish in but you will need to be careful not to injure or bury the fish what i did was is used a large plastic cup and scooped the gravel out and when i was ready to put sand in i washed the sand in the bag several times and then place the bag almost close to glass bottom releasing the sand slowly..

Yep use some nylon stockings usually knee highs to put some gravel in and place it on the bottom of the sand bed..
 
Okay, small problem here, In my tank i have some white base rock accenting a bigger fake rock piece that i bought at petsmart to cut down on cost. The big piece is hollow and fish can swim through it, problem is my two plecos are nowhere to be seen so they are in there somewhere. How can i get them out of the rock thing to change from grave to sand?
 
Yep seacrag rock i have 3 of them and i had to cut out bigger holes to remove stubborn fish but those fake rocks do fill in nicely..
 
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