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if it is heavily planted, there is no need to clean the substrate. leave the 'stuff' there and plants will be able to make use of it.
say i have a tank but its mostly planted. how do i clean the substrate. my tank is too small for an undergravel filter.
if it is heavily planted, there is no need to clean the substrate. leave the 'stuff' there and plants will be able to make use of it.
thomas liew
I sometimes use a piece of a garden hose to get it out. Just be careful not to suck out all the substrate as well...
What substrate are you using?
I guess if you really want to clean the surface of the substrate you could use a substrate cleaner. It's basically an inverted funnel so that the top of the substrate would be agitated and then the lighter stuff (hopefully the things you want to get rid of and not any fertiliser you have put inside) gets siphoned off. Eheim has a version which allows you to build extension like lego, but a simple one from the LFS cost around $10 should do.
You can "minimize" the mulm buildup with sparing feeding and taking out all rotting plant matter too.
That way, as tawauboy says, the plant can "use up" the rest and give the tank a good balance of input and output of matter.
celticfish
It is a good day to die!!!
I finally uploaded an avatar and Cupid is dead!!!
A hacked off soda bottle with a hose will do just nice as a vaccuming tool.
You also can regulate the flow, siphoning only the debris/dust and carefully not to suck out plants and substrate by simply applying pressure/slight kink at the hose.
That's exactly what I am using at the moment. DIY soda bottle gravel vaccum.
- eric
less than 1FT quite hard to clean, especially if planted. teck/med, do you guys have a pic of what your DIY solution look like ?
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