How Important Is Cleaning Gravel

[clown_loach]

I'm currently going through a fish in cycle daily clean out of the tank water on good advice from members of this forum to a newbie.

As it's all still new, how important is cleaning the gravel?

My 6 little xray tetras are coping very well with their daily wash out and as yet I haven't had the heart to buy any more fish until the tank is good and ready as don't want to stress any more fish.

Today I bought a syphon/gravel cleaner and been using it to empty the tank of water. If I want to eventually get bottom feeders to help keep the tank clean, should I be filtering the gravel at this stage?

I'm thinking the answer is probably going to be yes because the filters aren't ready to process the water anyway and seems I've got a few more weeks of cleaning out the water daily until the water test results start showing safer levels.

 

[ZoddyZod]

bottom feeders dont keep the bottom clean. They will eat any food that ends up there, but plant matter (if you have any) and poo are what will need to be removed by gravel vacuuming.

You don't have to gravel vac every week (I never did) but you will need to do it regularly otherwise it will get quite nasty in there. You probably have very little detrius currently in the gravel, so it should not be of any concern right now.

 

[Caprichoso]

If you don't ever want to deep clean your gravel, make sure you don't over feed your fish and plant ground cover plants and stem plants which will feed off the detrius in the gravel. I am working towards this goal personally, but at the moment, I only have about 40% of the substrate covered with plants. I do a light vacuum(more of a hover above the substrate) each week and I do a deep vacuum once a month. It also depends on how stocked you are and how many plants you have and how strong your filter is. I find that it's different for each person and you have to find a routine that works best for your set up.