barebottom reef maintenance

[jazer80]

i have heavy (5.5lbs of light rock) LR in my 2gallon aga. i have a barebottom tank.

this is my first bb tank, dunno how to best deal with the crap settling on the bottom. the rockwork makes siphoning it all out impossible. i see my only options as being

1) get a critter that would just go around down there and live in the crud/detritus down there, or

2) when doing water changes (which are large and frequent - 1 gallon, or 50% wc, done weekly, divided into two 1/2 gallon wc's), i could first use a turkey baster to get the detritus into a cloud, and then suck it out for the wc to be replaced with fresh water.


any ideas here? i don't want to bother my tank by making the cloud, but it seems most effective option (see tank stats in sig)

 

[TippyToeX]

Siphoning out during a water change is good, even better would be having enough water flow to keep that crud in suspension for your skimmer.

 

[jazer80]

not running or planning on running a skimmer (have a remora sitting a few feet away from the tank, just don't want/need it there)

to get more flow i would need to either eliminate the rockwork breaking up my HOB's flow, or add ph's, neither of which can work in my setup.... i guess i will just siphon out 25% of the water when the crud is suspended, and throw something into the HOB to grab the rest when it gets there