jprime84

My question regards tank cleaning in a planted tank. I would have to imagine its not ideal to uproot all of the plants while trying to vaccum gravel. Do I just root around as best I can without disturbing the plants? The only maintenance I have done so far has been keeping any dead plant matter out of the tank.

I am also concerned with spooking the fish. Seems like rooting around and disturbing gravel, wiping down the glass, splashing etc will really spook the fish. Any tips? I am planning on doing my first more thorough cleaning this weekend.

aquarist48

Hello Jprime. I would suggest "not" cleaning everything at once. Vacuum half of your tank this time and half the next time. Mainly because of your tank being newly established you don't want to over clean and have to go through a mini cycle. Moving the plants are up to you. I think you'll find most of your fish and food waste will be under and around your plants. Your fish will adapt to the maintenance schedule eventually. I think my fish enjoy me being in the tank now I've had them so long. Being that your tank is planted you might just want to vacuum around this time without uprooting everything.
Try to keep it fun!
Ken

Melissawater

The fish get used to you being in there after a few days (cleaning every day right now). One of my molly likes to get close to our hands when vacuuming because he thinks if your hand is in the tank with something it must be feeding time lol! It was a little stressful for them for the first couple of cleanings, but now most of the fish get close to the vacuum and check it out.

jprime84

Ok I will try that. I plan on light gravel vaccuming, maybe a 15% water change, wiping the front panel of the tank, and then rinsing the filter pads in that old tank water.

Alasse

In my medium/heavily planted tanks i do not vacuum the gravel at all, just do water changes, plant care & glass cleaning. In these tanks the mulm is used as fertalizer for the plants

In lightly planted tanks i only gravel clean the clear areas.

I never move a plant for cleaning purposes, it causes undue stress on the plant from having its roots disturbed all the time, some plants do not recover well from this and can die.

Fish get used to you doing maintenance

enthusiast

my routine is similar to alasse

i have a medium/heavily planted 75, and you simply just cannot move those plants, the val is very well established. In the open areas I do the gravel vac cleaning, but anywhere around plants or their roots it is fine to leave unclean in the gravel, because the plants will use it as a fertilizer. All the wastes will be broken down by them.

Otherwise, i just stick the gravel vac in the tank near the bottom and take out water and any large debris that gets sucked into the vac during the procedure.

As far as the fish being stressed to this they actually seem to enjoy it oddly enough. The all seem to get in their schools and swim from one end of the tank, up the side, and back to the other end continuously. Its quite neat to watch Odd how they only do it during cleanings too. They're not afraid of it anymore at all though

Nutter

I agree with Alasse & enthusiast. You don't want to be pulling plants out of the substrate. They generally don't cope with it very well & you would also find that after the tank has been established for awhile doing so would make more of a mess than you actually end up cleaning out! I clean the entire surface area of my substrate in my planted tanks but only disturb the top 1/2inch or so. You can dig down deeper where there are no plant roots if you wish but you will find after the plants have been established for some time that thier roots will be everywhere. Especially large plants like the swords. Thier root system can easily cover the entire floor of a medium size tank once they attain full size.

Try just doing one maintainance procedure each day. One day clean the glass, another do the vaccuuming & water change, another remove dead or rotting plant material. Just follow the one task per day routine & your fish will soon get used to you poking around in the tank & after awhile won't even seem to notice you are there. That does not include testing your water though. Do that as often as you think you need to & do it a t different times of day to check how stable the tank is over the day. Do the same task on the same day each week if you can & even better is if you can do any maintainance at the same time each day. Fish & plants thrive on regularity in the aquarium so the more regular your presence the faster your fish will get used to it. Just like they will be waiting for you if you feed them at the same times each day they will get used to you poking around in thier home each day at a certain time. It just becomes a part of daily life for them.

Nate McFin

Once in awhile I use a chopstick to move the gravel around a little while I vac around the plants this helps get the particles into the water column and easier to remove.Its great for tight areas. Dont do too much at one time though you dont want a lot of the debris in the water column. Just do what you can vac up at the same time.
You do want some in there for plant food anyway but once in awhile its nice to do a little clean up. Especially if you tend to overfeed as I am guilty of.