Cleaning the tank

[eicca]

I've got a question regarding cleaning the tank. I gravel vacuum once a week what I can (without removing plants or decorations), which gets a lot of the dirt out. With that I do a 20% water change and replace whatever filter media needs to be replaced and trim the plants (if needed).
However, since I've got a bunch of bladder snails in there, plus all the fish, I feel like there's just neverending poop everywhere. At a first glance, my tank looks quite clean, but there's a lot of poop in the gravel and can be seen on the plants as well. The two moss balls were covered in poop, so I tried to kinda clean them off and it started a storm of poop in the tank. XD
Also, if you look at the attached picture, there are some kind of brown smudges/growths at the front of the tank in the gravel. What is that?

Anyway, my question is: how can I be more efficient at cleaning the poop in a tank with so many plants? I feel very clumsy cleaning anywhere where there are plants and decorations. Should I do a big cleaning once in a while, taking out the decorations and some plants even?

 

[Essjay]

Did you deliberately add the bladder snails or were they on the plants when you bought them? If they were on the plants, the snail numbers and the amount of poop suggest over feeding the fish. The more food the fish eat, the more they will poop. The more uneaten food there is, the more the snails will reproduce.
Fish need a lot less food that you would think. We use most of our food to keep warm. Fish don't do this, they get their body temperature from the water. Maybe try feeding less, and not feeding for one or two days a week and see if that improves things.

 

[eicca]

The snails got there on the plants, but I do have 2 assassin snails that have been keeping their population very low.
As for feeding, I really try to give them only a little bit. The food I give to the rasboras (floating food) I give very slowly so that they always get it from the top and it never sinks and there's never too much of it. Same for the betta, he gets 1-2 pellets only. The pandas cories get one snack stick that they all share.

So, I really don't think I'm overfeeding. Even before I got the fish, before I even started feeding anything, I had the bladders there for a month and they still produced so much poop without any food. XD

In any case, any advice on how to clean it effectively?

 

[GaryE]

Bladder snails are a curse you'll never keep up with. Either start removing them on sight, which is a pain but can be part of your maintenance, or live with some waste in the tank. There really is no efficient way of cleaning that - maybe a power filter that moves it up - but that would kill your Betta.

I see the problem, but if you find a solution other than killing a lot of snails, you will have solved a problem millions of aquarists have faced.

 

[Playsander]

I've got a question regarding cleaning the tank. I gravel vacuum once a week what I can (without removing plants or decorations), which gets a lot of the dirt out. With that I do a 20% water change and replace whatever filter media needs to be replaced and trim the plants (if needed).

Why do you change your filter media?

 

[BrianK]

I do pretty much the same routine, minus changing filter media (I only rinse and put back in). Poop is just kind of a fact of life with fish and snails. Not really any way around that when you have living creatures in a semi-closed environment. I also won't worry about poop that is around the plants. Free fertilizer.

 

[eicca]

@GaryE, I'll let you know if I do XD I thought about catching and disposing of them, but felt it too cruel a solution.

@Playsander, oh, I mean these three light white sponges that my filter came with (placed above all the other actual filter media) that catch a lot of dirt and according to the manufacturer they need to be replaced once a week. I've been doing that as they do turn completely black within a week

 

[Byron]

@Playsander, oh, I mean these three light white sponges that my filter came with (placed above all the other actual filter media) that catch a lot of dirt and according to the manufacturer they need to be replaced once a week. I've been doing that as they do turn completely black within a week

Rinse the sponges at every water change to keep them clean, but there is no need to replace them unless they are literally falling apart. So long as they are filling the space and the water is forced to go through them and not around them, they are fine. I think all filter manufacturers say to replac4e media regularly, but this has no benefit and wastes money.

And if the aquarium is established (a couple of months), rinsing under the tap in war4m but not hot water is easiest. The nitrifying bacteria will not be killed doing this.

 

[Essjay]

I mean these three light white sponges that my filter came with (placed above all the other actual filter media) that catch a lot of dirt and according to the manufacturer they need to be replaced once a week

Do you mean filter floss, the medium that looks a bit like pillow stuffing? That does need replacing as it doesn't wash well and falls apart easily. But if you do mean sponge, then do as Byron says.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

It's hard to see - is the substrate gravel?
To get the stuff at the front caught between the glass and the gravel, use an old unwanted gift card or store points voucher/credit card, to scape the debris off the glass before using a gravel vac to remove it. This is just build up that happens, I clean that spot maybe once a month, just whenever I start to see a build up.

Don't uproot plants to clean under them! Plants do not wander around in the wild. They very much do not enjoy being uprooted, it damages the root system they've put out, and puts the plant into a kind of shock. We do uproot plants when we say, move them from a pot to our flower borders, but we also take steps to try to help the plant adjust, by trying to keep the rootball intact and "watering in" - giving it a thorough watering as soon as it's planted, and watering frequently as the plant begins to get over the shock and to encourage it to send out new roots and settle in to this new spot. We don't move plants around any more than absolutely needed, because plants hate it so much and can die if they're messed with too much.

Move an aquarium plant if you need to, but not to clean underneath it. Any mulm underneath the plant is being broken down into plant fertiliser anyway. I purchased a much smaller gravel vac with a small circular tube attachment purely to clean around plants in my smaller tanks, it's useful! It's okay to lift decor like wood and other ornaments to clean under and around them, but you don't need to do this weekly!

I think what you're worrying about isn't so much snail and fish poop, but mulm. It's natural and harmless to have some mulm in a tank, and tanks aren't meant to be a spotless environment anyway. I'll link our very own @AbbeysDad article and mulm and snails that I found really helpful when I was worrying about over-cleaning!

Your tank looks beautiful, really don't think you need to worry too much!

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[Playsander]

If you are replacing filter floss every week with the branded stuff especially for your filter you are spending a lot of money you don't need to.

Just buy a big roll of it and cut it to size.