It has been years since I have kept FW tanks but we just set up a 60 gallon planted tank for my daughter. It has a mixture of black sand and plant substrate , which is pretty fine grained. With my reef setups sand bottoms are maintained by the clean-up crews and generally don’t need any maintenance. I have noticed that there is a significant amount of waste collecting but I am unsure what is the best method for cleaning it with the dirt bottom. If I try to use a gravel vacuum, it sucks up the substrate along with the waste. Any suggestions on the best solution would be great.
Dirt bottom clean up question
- Thread starter driftdiver
- Start date
You can try increasing the flow to the area.
Otherwise, you just have to be careful about how you vacuum it. The detritus tends to be just light enough where if you hold the vacuum at the right height it will pick up the dirt and not the sand (a lot of trial and error).
There are clean up crew options in fw (though not as many as in a reef) like snails, shrimp, and crayfish. The fish options tend to limit these though.
Otherwise, you just have to be careful about how you vacuum it. The detritus tends to be just light enough where if you hold the vacuum at the right height it will pick up the dirt and not the sand (a lot of trial and error).
There are clean up crew options in fw (though not as many as in a reef) like snails, shrimp, and crayfish. The fish options tend to limit these though.
What I did was hold the vac at about 1in to 1.5 inch, depending on the weight of the substrate and make little circles, you get like a venturi effect and the bad comes up and substrate stays. You will need to find the right hight and circles size for your substrate, but over all works well.
