Is gravel cleaning mandatory?

[Cichlid_freak]

I have a cichlid tank with a sunsun 302 canister and a top filter. Though I have not tested it, but the water looks reasonably fine and fish are doing good. However, the substrate (brick red sand) is a bit dirty and I was wondering if the filters would pick it up over time and if I can leave it as is or I need to clean it. Looking forward to your advise.

Thank you for your help.

 

[pops]

yes, it is mandatory, when you siphon out use the drain tube to vacuum out the gravel. Not cleaning the gravel creates a bed for bugs like plantia, IcK and adds to nitrogen creep. its just becomes plain nasty.

 

[Blue Bear]

Yes, it is. I'm confused if you have sand or gravel?

 

[duanes]

I agree with the others, the detritus that builds up on sand, and/or gravel is a breeding ground for pathogenic bacteria, and or normally benign bacteria that when over populated can become pathogenic.
An example is Flexibactor columnaris, the bacteria that causes the often fatal disease, ducklips
Regular vacuuming helps to prevents this.

 

[Hoplo]

Cleaning ou th e gravel/sand should be a staple part of tank maintenance, your filter will never clean all the crap out of it.

 

[xraycer]

I'm going to have to somewhat disagree with being mandatory. While it is ideal to keep your tank as clean as possible I don't feel substrate vacuuming is mandatory. Reason 1: I don't clean my substrate, but I use sand and not gravel. The fish in my tanks constantly stirs up all the waste matter on the sand and sends it floating throughout the water column where it ultimately gets picked up by the filtration system. Also, I do 50% wc every 3-4 days. Reason 2: Back in the days where under gravel filtration was a standard, people hardly, if ever, clean out all the crud under the ugf panels.

While I'm in no way advocating not to clean the substrate, because it is a good habit to do so, but my own personal experience is that it is not mandatory.

 

[skjl47]

I'm going to have to somewhat disagree with being mandatory. While it is ideal to keep your tank as clean as possible I don't feel substrate vacuuming is mandatory. Reason 1: I don't clean my substrate, but I use sand and not gravel. The fish in my tanks constantly stirs up all the waste matter on the sand and sends it floating throughout the water column where it ultimately gets picked up by the filtration system. Also, I do 50% wc every 3-4 days. Reason 2: Back in the days where under gravel filtration was a standard, people hardly, if ever, clean out all the crud under the ugf panels.

While I'm in no way advocating not to clean the substrate, because it is a good habit to do so, but my own personal experience is that it is not mandatory.

Hello; I am one who kept tanks back in the days. I ran UGF's and had not caught on to the notion of doing a gravel vac/cleaning for over a decade.

It was my common practice to break down a tank every year or two back then for a general cleaning. It was fortunate that my tanks were in the 10 and 20 gallon size. The substrate, either gravel or sand, would indeed be nasty. This was labor intensive but not complicated. A simple rinsing of the gravel was the main thing. I keept the live plants and fish in buckets or another tank.

I now use a gravel vac on my tanks. It does not prevent the substrate from becoming loaded with "gunk" but is does slow the buildup process down. I can now run a tank for many years before the need to break one down. I could possibly see a tank never having to be broken down if a person was dilligent enough.

I like live rooted plants in my tanks and am reluctant to be too aggressive when doing a gravel vac around them. This allows the "gunk" to build up in a heavy planted tank. The plants do, however, seem to help keep a tank run in better condition and i think they are a positive.

One practice I have used with success is to keep a cleaned amount of substrate on hand. During a typical water change some amount of the substrate is siphoned out with the water. That substrate is replaced with the cleaned and the dirty is cleaned for the next water change. This way over a series of water changes i can eventually clean most all of the substrate. Has the advantage of not being a big enough tank disturbance to cause issues. In theory a tank could be run continuously, but i have not quite managed it as yet.

Mandatory = NO. Like flossing teeth, it is a good idea.

 

[Cichlid_freak]

Thank you all for your inputs. Here are a few more details:

I have sand as substrate. My redtail catfish often stirs up the substrate so the dirt floats. Will the filter catch most of it? Honestly, I am reluctant to disturb the substrate as it looks natural with a bit of algae and dirt but if it needs to be cleaned, I guess I have to do it. I have a common Pleco too; any chance the pleco and the catfish can keep the sand reasonably clean?

 

[convict360]

I used to have gravel, and when i changed to sand it kicked up a massive sh*tstorm of poo that was trapped in the gravel; i was gobsmacked, I thought I was cleaning the gravel enough before that.

Thin layer of sand now, but i still go over it with the gravel vac etc; surprising just how much dirt can get trapped!

 

[skjl47]

Thank you all for your inputs. Here are a few more details:

I have sand as substrate. My redtail catfish often stirs up the substrate so the dirt floats. Will the filter catch most of it? Honestly, I am reluctant to disturb the substrate as it looks natural with a bit of algae and dirt but if it needs to be cleaned, I guess I have to do it. I have a common Pleco too; any chance the pleco and the catfish can keep the sand reasonably clean?

hello; Do a search for sand substrate. One issue reported with sand over an inch thick is the possible build up of toxins in deep sand from anaerobic bacteria. I have read several posts about this. A common suggestion is to stir up the sand from time to time to help prevent this.

If you are having issues of small clouds of snad particles floating around, that is common with sand. The filters will over time get alot of it, but it can take a long time and can wear on impellers and such. My fix for that in the past was to make a screening sieve and sift the dry sand so as to remove the very fine stuff. The screen size will determine the sand particle size you wind up with. After that a very thorough rinsing. If you did not at least rinse the sand, then the clouding issue will be with you for a long time.

I doubt that the fish will keep the sand "clean" as you hope. In fact they will likely add to build up what needs to be cleaned. Never kept a red tail, but have kept the common pleco and they make a lot of long stringy feeces.

Here is what I discovered about the pleco poop. I added a few red ramshorn snails to the pleco tank. The pleco feeces has a lot of partly digested vegtable matter in it. The snails fed on the pleco poop and broke it down into much finer snail poop which was not so unsightly. This had a few benefits. First being that after a while I had many snails. I would use the snails as fresh live food for fish in other tanks.
Another benefit was the live plants , had to be non-rooted, grew like crazy. This gave the pleco something fresh to graze on as an addition to the vegtable pellet food.

Good luck