when cleaning the tank..

[WorldNation]

i chnge 25% of my water once a week. thats when i syphin my gravel.


this maybe kinda stupid. but when u guys clean youre tanks. do u leave youre decorations in place? cause i take everything out of the tank*minus the fish*

[Mbuniac]

I used to take everything but the plants out. Now that my tank is larger and my rocks unwieldy, I move everything out of one end of the tank and then move things into the empty space so that I can vacuum thoroughly.

[merlyn2221]

I used to take everything out, too, but now I have more than 80lbs of rock total, so you can forget that.

I just use my Python around the rocks. I figure in about 4-6 months I'll change all the rock around and then worry about cleaning the other substrate then.

[Overawed]

I have a UGF in my big tank, so I take out half of the decor rocks and siphon the hell out of one side of the tank at a time once per week. That way I only take out 25 percent of the water. If I did the whole tank, I would take out way too much water.

[Cichlid Jeans]

I take out all the rocks in each tank once or twice a year to clean them up. I'm in a state of denial about how much grunge I find in the gravel under them.
:oops:

No worry about the socolofi tank, though. The dominant male thinks gravel under a rock is a challenge to his rule. He gets everything down to the bare glass bottom, and I have to go in and re-arrange things. Piles of rock are constantly collapsing. I'm waiting for the morning when I find half of him sticking out from under a boulder.
:lol:

Ciclid Jeans