Help keeping a bare bottom tank

[esoxlucius]

After gradually thinning out my gravel I eventually went totally bare bottom a couple of months ago. If you don't have a powerhead then the poop just lays on the bottom and, due to there being no gravel to disguise it, it sticks out like a sore thumb and looks very unsightly.

So I got a powerhead and then the bottom of my tank was always pristine. However, I realised that all I was doing was sweeping all the poop under the carpet. Meaning it was still in the system creating nitrate. I wanted to address this issue so did a couple of weeks of tests.

My powerhead is on a timer. It is off all night so when I come down first thing in the morning any poop that's on the bottom would usually stay there until the powerhead came on and blew it down into the sump. I took advantage of this and now what I do every morning is manually suck the poop out with a home made syphon so it's completely out of the closed loop system.

This has worked wonders for my water quality. Instead of once a week 80% water changes I now do an 80% water change every 11 days. Nitrate build up has fallen off massively since I started sucking all the poop out.

 

[Galantspeedz]

since we are on this.... do your fish poop during WC..... my fishes love to poop during WC

 

[Jexnell]

since we are on this.... do your fish poop during WC..... my fishes love to poop during WC

Never fails as soon as I start to refill they all take huge craps and it looks like I didn't even clean the tank.

 

[Galantspeedz]

Never fails as soon as I start to refill they all take huge craps and it looks like I didn't even clean the tank.

mine is before and after lol

 

[pacu mom]

Modify your filter uptake so that it is just off the floor. (You can use stiff tubing from the hardware store) Place the uptake where the poop accumulates. We have used "poop sucker" pipes in our 300 gallon tank. They work really well for us. I'd rather have the poop directly removed from the tank rather broken up into the water column and then removed.

Poop sucker pipes have worked so well for us, that we wouldn't consider not using them in a bare floor tank. Our big tank is not set up yet, but here are some of the uptakes and returns for the mechanical system. All of the uptakes will be drawing water/debris from just off the floor of the tank.

While we utilitize specific mechanical filtration via RTL filters, other people have extended the uptake of their canister filters to just off the floor of their tank and had good results also.

 

[kno4te]

Modify your filter uptake so that it is just off the floor. (You can use stiff tubing from the hardware store) Place the uptake where the poop accumulates. We have used "poop sucker" pipes in our 300 gallon tank. They work really well for us. I'd rather have the poop directly removed from the tank rather broken up into the water column and then removed.

Poop sucker pipes have worked so well for us, that we wouldn't consider not using them in a bare floor tank. Our big tank is not set up yet, but here are some of the uptakes and returns for the mechanical system. All of the uptakes will be drawing water/debris from just off the floor of the tank.

While we utilitize specific mechanical filtration via RTL filters, other people have extended the uptake of their canister filters to just off the floor of their tank and had good results also.

That’s a great idea.

 

[Seedy J]

Great thread, I set up my first bare bottom tanks this year and have the same problem. I've got a powerhead in one of them but it's near the top of the tank - I'll try moving it to the bottom today.

 

[islandguy11]

Modify your filter uptake so that it is just off the floor.

First love your disguised uptakes & returns, did you make those yourself or buy them?

As I'm about to install my very first canister, my main worry with having the uptake all the way at the bottom of the tank is that in the (even unlikely) event of a catastrophe outside of the tank (e.g. major canister leak), then the whole tank could be drained, right?

So I think I'm going to put any uptakes at a level which would leave at least enough water for my fish to survive in such event, then as usual siphon out anything that needs it once a day, as exoxlucius mentions this has the added benefit of helping with nitrate levels.

 

[quasar]

I keep mine a couple inches off the bottom and point it down and toward the front glass of the tank. This helps create a stirring effect and pushes the detritus up into the water column. If all you’re running is a single sunsun, you could keep it in the middle and point down, or put it at the bottom and point across the tank. The suction isn’t amazing on those filters so you’d have to point it pretty much right at the intake.
I started with just a single sunsun and had the intake on the right side of the tank. I used two power heads to push everything that way from the left. I got a lot of detritus to the right side but it didn’t all get sucked up by the filter intake. Now, I have the sunsun plus a sump on an overflow. I prefer to keep it suspended so the overflow can catch some and the sunsun catches some as well. It doesn’t get everything, so I still have to vacuum. But still much less of a hassle IMO than substrate.

So silly question. When you say it's pointing to the front of the tank, do you mean that you have the powerhead on one longside and it boows towards the facing long side. Or you have it on a short side facing the bottom towards a longside as well?

 

[pacu mom]

First love your disguised uptakes & returns, did you make those yourself or buy them?

As I'm about to install my very first canister, my main worry with having the uptake all the way at the bottom of the tank is that in the (even unlikely) event of a catastrophe outside of the tank (e.g. major canister leak), then the whole tank could be drained, right?

So I think I'm going to put any uptakes at a level which would leave at least enough water for my fish to survive in such event, then as usual siphon out anything that needs it once a day, as exoxlucius mentions this has the added benefit of helping with nitrate levels.

You have a valid concern. We have a pipe connected to our mechanical filtration that goes under the house and to the patio. By opening the valve, we can drain the tank dry via the poop suckers. I accidentally did that once while talking on the phone and forgetting I was doing a water change. My fish flopped around on the dry floor for about 15 minutes while I continued to gab. I thought my husband was stacking firewood in the living room, so I ignored the banging noises which were actually the fish thrashing around. They survived.

I was going to use black PVC pipe for my poop sucker pipes, but then we decided we wanted a background in the tank. So I covered the pipe up with Pond Foam and Polygem epoxy.

The artists who painted the backgrounds, painted the poop suckers to match the backgrounds.