rg5141

Hi All,

Should I be vacuuming the gravel at every weekly water change? I've been changing about 25% of the H20 each week but I've vacuumed every other week on average.

I seem to be getting amounts of ammonia in the .25 PPM range more often then I would expect given the amount of food we are putting in (once per day).

The tank is not overstocked with the 13 fish currently in there.

Maybe I'm not being aggressive enough with stirring up the gravel and things are building up. Any ideas are welcome.
Ron

agabr123

i do a gravel vacuum every week and try to stir the gravel up as much as possible, with my tanks that have sand the waste and leftover food just sits on top so it's easier to clean. but if you're still getting an ammonia reading i'd suggest doing two smaller water changes with gravel vacuums every week.

rg5141

Thanks, Alex. I think I've been a bit tentative by vacuuming mainly the top of the gravel. I found another post with the advice to get as deep into it as possible.

agabr123

no problem yeah you'll want to stir things up quite a bit with gravel because all of the waste will fall to the very bottom of the tank underneath all of it