Substrate cleanup

So, I am going to post one more dumb question.
How to clean a sand substrate. Lately I have been hearing how you are not supposed to disturb the substrate, go 0,5 cm deep tops, to not release more ammonia in the water column.
How substrate poking leads to algae, and yes, I do have algae, could be related, could be anything else really.

However, if I just do a water change and not clean the substrate, I had fish with bacterial infection from the buildup after a while, so keeping the substrate clean is super important to me. So how are you supposed to clean sand and whatever lies on top of it, without actually disturbing the substrate (which in my case is just 2-3 cm of sand, nothing complicated, no under substrate). If i use tetra vac thing I have and just leave it on the surface, it doesnt do anything. If I dont use anything and try to just siphon it out with a (garden) hose, I take out a lot of sand too.

Beastije said:

So, I am going to post one more dumb question.
How to clean a sand substrate. Lately I have been hearing how you are not supposed to disturb the substrate, go 0,5 cm deep tops, to not release more ammonia in the water column.
How substrate poking leads to algae, and yes, I do have algae, could be related, could be anything else really.

However, if I just do a water change and not clean the substrate, I had fish with bacterial infection from the buildup after a while, so keeping the substrate clean is super important to me. So how are you supposed to clean sand and whatever lies on top of it, without actually disturbing the substrate (which in my case is just 2-3 cm of sand, nothing complicated, no under substrate). If i use tetra vac thing I have and just leave it on the surface, it doesnt do anything. If I dont use anything and try to just siphon it out with a (garden) hose, I take out a lot of sand too.

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Most siphons will have a sand attachment that just gets placed on top of the sand and sucks the waste from the top. I use an electric siphon for this. Also speeds up water change

well if you're using a garden hose means to me you want to do it on the cheap side
the issue you're having is that the suction will pull at the rate of flow of the hose literally pulling sand out...
you can cut this flow and be able to see if its pulling too much sand by simple cutting the bottom of a pop bottle...those 500ml or 750ml ones
attach to the hose and put some duct tape on it...
if it starts pulling sand where it fills even half the bottle you can cut the flow by bending the hose and letting the sand settle back down
it's a cheap hack and it works xD

Use a gravel cleaner and kink the hose if the syphon starts to suck the sand out.

edited to change sound to sand, not sure what was going thru my head when I typed that.

Thanks guys, but you are sort of missing the point. All the new research says that you are not really supposed to do a deep gravel/sand clean and not disturb the substrate, just take what lies on top of the substrate. Which is hard to do with any sort of gravel cleaner attachment since if you just put it on the surface, it almost doesnt do anything

I guess smaller flow and more patience would be the key there

There is a broader issue here. I have had tanks in which I never touched the substrate (it was play sand) for years. I have had other tanks that got a surface cleaning every water change. The fish factor into this, as well as how much you feed them. Snails and shrimp benefit too, moreso snails.

Granted when I had shell-dwelling cichlids, I did the substrate cleanup every third WC and had zero issues, because they would sift the sand and eat very cleanly.
The corydoras are a bit of a different kettle of fish for me, I am still learning with them and absolutely love them and want them to prosper and be healthy. So far overfeeding them seems to be the only reliable approach, since they eat quite slowly and have ferocious feeders as companions (and in here the number 50 on the ember tetras show, otherwise you wouldnt be even able to tell there is that many).
And the tylomelanias are not exactly helping keep the substrate clean eithter. The MT snails are lately more interested in what I feed on the surface than to keep the substrate clean inside, which is a different but understandable 'problem'.
Biggest problem for me with the garden hose and any sort of cleaning attachment is, I cant control the speed of the flow of the water by pinching the hose, since it is not so easy and my hand might just fall off slower would be better, because at this flow rate, I sift through 1/3 of the sand and am at my allotted 30% of WC, so I rotate the parts of the floor I clean every WC. Ofcourse I do my most diligence on the part where I also feed.

I do not want to be more specific because I do not know your specifics. But I will say that the tanks housing my group of Corydoras, first the 5-foot 115g which had 70 cories, and more recently my 40g that had 40 cories, never had the sand touched. Both were also well planted, with Echinodorus (larger swords) and these have very extensive root systems. I also feed less than I suspect many do. One day a week fast, sometimes two days, not a problem. And sparingly the days they are fed.

I don't know what size tank this is for, because my method doesn't work on bigger tanks. But, what I do for my 10 gallon is I use a turkey baster, it has enough suction to get things off the surface of the sand, but can be used to "deep clean" the sand too if you want. The down side is that getting all the waste out takes quite a bit longer. I am a slow mover, but it still takes me a good hour or more to do a good cleaning on that tank (granted, it also has a ton of a algae that I am trying to remove).
Just some thoughts.
Also, I have used two different kinds of sand. One that was marketed as aquarium sand and was so fine you couldn't distinguish the grains, and one that is pool filter sand. I have found that the pool filter sand is easier to clean, because it is heavier than the other stuff and doesn't get sucked up too quickly.

Morganna said:

I don't know what size tank this is for, because my method doesn't work on bigger tanks. But, what I do for my 10 gallon is I use a turkey baster, it has enough suction to get things off the surface of the sand, but can be used to "deep clean" the sand too if you want. The down side is that getting all the waste out takes quite a bit longer. I am a slow mover, but it still takes me a good hour or more to do a good cleaning on that tank (granted, it also has a ton of a algae that I am trying to remove).
Just some thoughts.
Also, I have used two different kinds of sand. One that was marketed as aquarium sand and was so fine you couldn't distinguish the grains, and one that is pool filter sand. I have found that the pool filter sand is easier to clean, because it is heavier than the other stuff and doesn't get sucked up too quickly.

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Stupid me, this tank has 60cm height and it is on a stand, so I can hardly reach the bottom except at the very edge of the tank
That is why I have attachment like this
but I was more curious about other approach, since this one may not work for me as I would have liked

I used to gravel clean my tanks every week. The gravel cleaner was pushed right to the bottom and it never caused ammonia problems.

There's no reason cleaning the substrate should cause an ammonia problem. Ammonia is produced by fish, shrimp & snails, and anything that breaks down in water. The substrate doesn't break down so that isn't going to cause ammonia. If there is gunk (uneaten food, fish waste, rotting plant, or anything else) breaking down in or on the substrate, that will produce ammonia and removing that gunk from the tank will reduce ammonia production in the water. But the fish and other organisms will constantly produce ammonia and the filter should convert that into nitrite and then nitrate.

Beastije said:

Thanks guys, but you are sort of missing the point. All the new research says that you are not really supposed to do a deep gravel/sand clean and not disturb the substrate, just take what lies on top of the substrate. Which is hard to do with any sort of gravel cleaner attachment since if you just put it on the surface, it almost doesnt do anything

I guess smaller flow and more patience would be the key there

Click to expand...

I'd really like to see some of this research, since there seems to be a lot of myths and misinformation around when it comes to substrate and potential dangers around disturbing it.