Vacuming the tank

Hi Guys.

I feel like a complete nut asking this but here it goes.

I recently got myself some nice driftwood that I am busy preparing, I'm going to attached some moss to it and onto the rocks with some live plants as well.

But my question is, how do you guys do the gravel vacs then?

For some reason my Nitrate is a bit high and I figured that it can be because of some of the left over food and fish poop that goes into the gravel.
So I really started doing a deep gravel vac every week to get rid of all those thing, it dip drop a bit but still not enough.

So if I add the driftwood and plants I'm afraid that I won't be able to do a nice deep gravel vac anymore except if I take all the decor out everytime (which is not advisable)

Thanks guys and sorry for the dumb question

 

You should never do a deep gravel vac, it releases ammonia and nitrates this could lead to some fish fatalities.
If you do desire to do a gravel vac you literally need to scrape the gravel and not dig into it.

As for the plants the roots of the plant absorbs the nitrates and uses it as nutritional value, to be honest been running a planted tank for the past two years now and never do gravel vac's only have some bottom feeders, that cleans uneaten foods. I do however do 50% WC WEEKLY and religiously. HTH

 

Hi Hein

Thanks a lot for this, it just shows that one can always learn new things.

Any advice maybe if i would require a specific substrate, CO2 or anything else? Because I just went for the plastic plants and fake ornaments, but these pics of planted tanks got me to want to change mine.

It is a 250L set up and I did add 2 High Fin Plecos, 2 clown loached and then there is also 2 corries in there, is this maybe to much or not?

 

You are way under stocked still for that size tank. Sorry didn't know its plastic plants.
Well there is quite a few substrates available for planted tanks, like ADA AS II, Flourite etc.
CO2 best is to get a regulator and go pressurized unless you have patience then you can go the DIY CO2 route but on this size tank I wouldn't, and then for the anything else good lights would come highly recommended.

A word of caution though, High fin plecos will uproot your plants quite a lot. If you do not decide to go the planted route I would suggest getting more clown loaches, they like to be in a group.

 

I do a deep gravel vac every month or so. I was initially worried about the ammonia spike as a result so but reasoned that you are vacuuming up the disturbed gravel so any accumulated ammonia goes up the tube. All the material from the gravel goes up the tube, evidenced by the fact that the water is not clouded by crud from the gravel. I check ammonia and it was 0 after a gravel vac. As a precaution the sump is run on max while I vacuum.

As for ornaments and stuff, I vacuum around and only remove stuff like wood with nothing growing on it.