How do you gravel clean

[Dearra]

Hi Guys,

I am going to turn my boring tank into a beautiful planted tank. Not ever having a planted one before, I was just wondering if someone could tell me how you do a gravel clean when the tank is full of plants. I have seen some beautiful setups on here and always wondered how they were cleaned.

Dearra

[fish_r]

i dont, i have bn's, sae, clown loaches in the same tank and they seem to do a pretty good job of doing it for me...

[Phlipper]

I use a combination of gravel vac sizes, a standard for open areas and a thin one for getting in amoung the plants. I only gravel vac thoroughly about once a month, the rest of the time I just allow a syphon hose to suck up surface debris. It is near impossible to suck up all detrius matter with a heavily planted tank, sometimes use my hand to swish debris out of the plant thickets, wait for it to settle and then syphon it up.

Basically as long as fish eat and poop it out the other end you will always need to gravel vac regularly, failure to do so will in time lead to a putrid substrate and disease. So if you want a lush planted tank you have to put up with a more tedious cleaning regime, or make it easy and plant thinly.