Water cloudy after vacuuming.

[npatel]

I use a gravel cleaner to clean the gravel at the bottom of the tank and this also siphons the water out. My tank is only a 40litre tank so 1 10 litre bucket is all the water I need to take out.

Problem - the siphon seems to extract 10 litres of water with muck but the water does not look clean at all. in fact its all cloudy and murky till the next day. I guess the filter cleans the water and any solids I can't get out with a net or the siphon.

Is this normal? does the water look murky after a gravel clean for a few hrs? should I put all the fish in a bucket of tank water while I give the gravel a major clean and remove more of the water?

Plse help as I need to do another clean this Sat.

Thanks

 

[DrOizo]

this is perfectly normal if you think about it. Stirring up all of the collected detritus and muck on the bottom of your tank with a siphon is bound to create a disturbance for a little while. Taking a day to clear though is slightly less good as it indicates that there is an axcessive amount of detritus on the bottom of your tank. More regular cleaning and scooping up un eaten food should sort this out. My fish like it when I agitate the gravel a bit as it agitates all of the food etc hidden between the gravel. Be careful being over enthusiastic cleaning the gravel though as the gravel harbours a lot of your usefull bacteria and you don't wan't to lose it!

 

[npatel]

Thanks DrOizo

I'm new to all this hence a little unsure. I'll clean the tank once a week for the next few weeks rather than once every 2 wks as instructed by my LFS.

Thanks Again.