Tank Vacuuming Conclusions

[Vince G.]

I've been trying to sort out all of this information that I have been reading on here about whether it necessary to vacuum your substrate in a planted/ semi-planted tank, and whether or not that is dependent on the type of substrate you have. I am interested in this because, like many of you, I vacuum my tank quite often (at least twice a week), and would not be too upset if I didn't have to do it so much. I also am interested in changing my substrate from gravel to Fluorite or Eco-complete soon(leaning toward Fluorite), and planting even more (I posted a thread on this before, so we don't necessarily have to re-visit the best substrate debate).

Here are the conclusions/observations that I have come up with about all of this:

It seems like those tanks that don't get vacuumed a lot are those planted tanks that have a very small bio-load. For example a 20 Gal, heavily planted with 8-10 neon/rummynose tetra-size fish or so. With that type of scenario, am I right that the waste being produced by the fish is being completely used up by the plants, eliminating the need to vacuum regularly?

It seems like the ones that do need frequent vacuuming are those with much bigger bio-loads (or even those that house bigger fish), meaning that the plants can't consume all of the fish waste. I haven't yet heard of a large Cichlid, Arowanna or other big fish keeper saying that they don't have to vacuum their tank. I think mine is in this catagory: I have a 92 Gallon tank with a three med-large fish (2 severums and a barbus filamentosus), and the rest are small-med size fish (3 rainbows, 3 cories, 3 neons, 2 tetras,2 rams and a BN).

Does type of substrate play into this at all? It seems that it's convenient to vacuum Floruite and Eco-complete size substrates, but I've read many posts about people being concerned about vacuuming sand substrates, because they don't want to suck all of the sand up. The successful sand substrate/non-vacuum tanks seem to be the smaller bio-load tanks that don't need to be disturbed often.

So it seems that what I'm getting at is: If you have a tank with a large bio-load from a full stock, or just from bigger fish that poop a lot (especially carnivorous ones), you may always have to vacuum your gravel frequently, and there is probably no number of plants that you could have to use up the fish waste in a large enough amount or timely enough manner to keep the tank in balance. It also seems that sand substrates are inconvenient in tanks that need to be vacuumed more frequently.

Any Thoughts?:huh:

 

[prober]

I vacuum my sand planted tank but not by plunging the vac into the sand. I swirl the vac above the sand which blows the stuff off of the bottom where it gets sucked up without picking up any sand.

I thought the purpose of Eco complete and similar substrates was to let the waste be absorbed by the substrate, but I have no personal experience with those.

 

[bluemeate]

add a few more plants and only vacuum once a week? i got a 50 gal with bout 30 little one inch fish and okay plants and only vacuum 1/3 the tank every month

 

[BettaFishMommy]

i don't vacuum my planted tanks at all on a regular basis. two (one 20 long and one 2.5) have sand, and the 55 has a gravel/heavy sand mix. for the sand tanks i do the hover/swirl as mentioned by prober, but only in the open areas, not where plants are.

for the 55, i don't touch the substrate at all unless i'm doing a major rescape (pulling up all the plants and moving them around). when i do that, i either gravel vac deeply or just use my hand to churn up the gravel while using the vac to suck out the crud. if the 55 has gone a while without a rescape, i'll move the fish to a rubbermaid for the 'hand churning', since it does kick up a fair bit of crud.

as long as your bioload and plants are in a good balance then the mulm will be broken down and used by the plants for the most part, and you won't have a lot of crud sitting on your gravel.

 

[Chrisk-K]

Amano shrimps in my tanks make vacuuming redundant. Nothing stays at the bottom.

 

[Rbishop]

Your post has some solid conclusions, IMO. But remember that some of those larger fish are not just creating waste, they are messy eaters to begin with. If there is a lack of bottom dwellers, as they be seen as a food item, lmao, the bottom can get messy from left overs.

 

[Dr. Awkward]

I think it depends on whether you are using a filter or plants for filtration and whether you have an organic or inorganic substrate.

If you grow plants in an inorganic substrate and rely on the bacterial colony in your filter to break down fish waste then you need to keep doing gravel siphons. In this situation the plants use some but not all of the nutrients produced by the mulm so there is an excess of nutrients that end up going to the filter bacteria. Also, since the substrate is inorganic aside from the mulm accumulation, there isn't much of a nutrient sink going on under the surface. Again, excess nutrients go to the filter bacteria. With all these extra nutrients coming in but no mulm going out you will eventually reach a point where your water quality suffers.

If you grow plants in an organic substrate and rely on those plants for filtration then you don't need to do gravel siphons. This works because the organics in the substrate create a great nutrient sink so most of the excess nutrients from the mulm stay where they should - under the surface of the gravel where your plants can use them. If you are relying on plants to process all of the ammonia in the tank you will need to have at enough plants for your particular bioload. This is easy if you're keeping small fish but you'd need a ton of plants to handle big fish, which might not be possible in some setups.

It's possible but not easy to have an inorganic substrate and still rely on plants for biological filtration. If you have enough plants and enough accumulated mulm then you can turn your inorganic substrate organic, which would give you the nutrient sink you need to feed the plants while keeping the algae away. It would be kind of hard to do this initially because the excess nutrients in the water column from not siphoning up mulm would create algae, which could end up outcompeting your plants for nutrients and keep them from growing strong enough to filter the water while you wait for the mulm to create a nutrient sink. You'd also initially need to use a filter for biological filtration, which would give your plants one more enemy in the fight for nutrients and slow the process even more and maybe even stall it indefinitely.

As for sand, I believe it's only useful when used as a deep sand bed. Deep sand beds don't require siphoning for the same reasons organic substrates with plants used as filtration don't require siphoning. Use sand for anything else and you'll run into the siphoning problems you mentioned.

 

[Khemul]

It seems like those tanks that don't get vacuumed a lot are those planted tanks that have a very small bio-load. For example a 20 Gal, heavily planted with 8-10 neon/rummynose tetra-size fish or so. With that type of scenario, am I right that the waste being produced by the fish is being completely used up by the plants, eliminating the need to vacuum regularly?

That is less of the plants helping and more of the fact that those fish are producing very little waste. It would probably break down by natural process before the average aquarium owner even noticed a build-up. The plants would help towards that though.

It seems like the ones that do need frequent vacuuming are those with much bigger bio-loads (or even those that house bigger fish), meaning that the plants can't consume all of the fish waste. I haven't yet heard of a large Cichlid, Arowanna or other big fish keeper saying that they don't have to vacuum their tank. I think mine is in this catagory: I have a 92 Gallon tank with a three med-large fish (2 severums and a barbus filamentosus), and the rest are small-med size fish (3 rainbows, 3 cories, 3 neons, 2 tetras,2 rams and a BN).

I think this is more visual. The waste/debris created by larger fish is much harder to ignore. A few flakes in the gravel is nothing, but a bunch of krill bits or chunks of pellets everywhere is something that may concern the aquarium owner when it comes to appearances/water quality. Plus considering that bigger fish = bigger poo and thus it is less likely to simply fall through the gravel and disappear from view.

Does type of substrate play into this at all? It seems that it's convenient to vacuum Floruite and Eco-complete size substrates, but I've read many posts about people being concerned about vacuuming sand substrates, because they don't want to suck all of the sand up. The successful sand substrate/non-vacuum tanks seem to be the smaller bio-load tanks that don't need to be disturbed often.

So it seems that what I'm getting at is: If you have a tank with a large bio-load from a full stock, or just from bigger fish that poop a lot (especially carnivorous ones), you may always have to vacuum your gravel frequently, and there is probably no number of plants that you could have to use up the fish waste in a large enough amount or timely enough manner to keep the tank in balance. It also seems that sand substrates are inconvenient in tanks that need to be vacuumed more frequently.

Sand is very easy to vacuum. You just wave the vacuum over the sand (high enough where the sand doesn't get pulled up) and watch the debris get sucked into the vac. Plus you tend to see everything that needs to get vacuumed right away rather then worrying about what is below the surface. In that way it would be more convenient in cases where frequent vacuuming is required.

 

[bluemeate]

can mulm form toxic pockets in home depot 3/8ths pea size gravel?

its not heavily planted but nitrates constantly remain below 5ppm and its about 25 1-2inch fish in a 55gal

i gravel vac bout once every 3 months but im thinking maybe i could get away with nevwr doing it?

 

[garyfla]

Hi
Have been out of FW aquariums for many years but have decided to keep a 75 soft and a 125 hardwater tank.. Have been unable to find any info on automatic water changers and gravel purgers?? Ii'm a big believer in water changes and these systems reduce the workload by about 90 percent . Why would you not want to use one??. What's changed??? gary