Challenges of tank maintenance with Hillstream’s…

[Magnum Man]

I do major tank maintenance about once a month, as busy as I am… it’s too hot and humid to do anything outside, and yesterday I volunteered my time to a family building their own house, and the husband suffered a 3 week injury, so he’s about 3 weeks behind, in getting it buttoned up before winter… so I’m fried… a good day to do tank maintenance… pulled the filter cartridge on the 1st ( of 2 ) Tidal 75’s on that tank… good thing I do that over a dedicated dish pan… one of my smallest Vietnamese Tiger Hillstream’s was all fat and happy in the filter cartridge… not sure if he squeezed his way in through the skimmer portion, slots, or swam up the waterfall of the filter outlet…
Then I had 3 Panda Garza’s surfing the inside of the gravel vacuum tube, while doing water changes… so I had to carefully back flush the water out of that tube, to get the pandas back in the tank…
On to Tidal #2… to see if I can rediscover any more residents

 

[Magnum Man]

Well no new residents found in the 2nd filter…

But in my medium Cichlid tank, serviced before the Hillstream tank, I was amazed at how much sand had found it’s way to the filter cartridge… even though the skimmer is unaltered, and the filter by design pulls a good portion of water from the top part of the tank, and even though the draw tube is a full 12 inches from the bottom… sand is of coarser design… the 4 eartheaters must be keeping busy… and I’m sure the 7 Cory’s aren’t helping

 

[GaryE]

Eartheaters will often swim to the surface, sifting sand through their gills. It can be hard on any filters it gets into.

Corys though tend to keep sand on the bottom as they work through it.