Cleaning & General Maintenance Advice

[csantanavaz]

Hi all.

New(ish)to the hobby and thought id see if anyonr had any good tips/skills in terms of cleaning.

As you can see (I hope) in the image below I have spent quite a while creating a fish colloseum out of live rock.. they are all attached with clear acrylic rods..

An issue which (unbelievably) I didnt think about is cleaning efficiently and getting rid of fish poop effectively... as obviously I dont want to have to rebuild the castle every few weeks...

Has anyone got any good tips/tactics to get into the nooks and crannys? Currently I have a long cleaning gravel cleaner which is not flexible and stops me getting to a fair bit of the sand...

My LFS had nothing to offer haha..

Thanks!

 

[dave.m]

Conchs will clean up your substrate and much of your rock. If there's any algae you'll want some snails like turbos and astreas. Nassarius are good, too.

For the rockwork, if you have a lot of detritus you can just wave your hand in the water or use a a small pump to send a gentle current over the rock. Once the detritus is suspended much of it will go over your overflow into the filter socks in your sump. Do this weekly when you are doing your maintenance.

If you have a lot of detritus you may be feeding too much.

Dave.M

 

[csantanavaz]

apologies i was generally talking about when cleaning it out rather than inhabitants!
i currently have a decent sized clean up crew and various snails etc.
have heard a lot about hte pumps on the rocks so whilst i clean today i'm going to reaarange the pumps and do this.

FINGERS CROSSED MY BLOODY NITRATE LEVELS GET DOWN BELOW 40

 

[woodnaquanut]

Do you have filter socks?

The idea is to stir it up and then filter it out. Change the socks soon after the socks clean it up and it will be exported.

If you are trying to get rid of algae, I much prefer using creatures. I'm lazy! You still have to get rid of what the grazers produce. GFO, carbon, skim, water change, etc.

It takes time to get stability. How long's your tank been up?

 

[uncleL]

Hello there! Welcome! I not a fan of the 2 clowns, 2 domino damsels, 2 blue damsels...are the clowns "NEMO" ?

 

[uncleL]

I have a scheduled cleaning once a week with 10 percent water change and at the EOM I do a complete cleaning, which includes; filters, powerheads and skimmer with 50 percent water change. I very seldom stir my sand bed.

 

[csantanavaz]

Why arent you a fan? I like them! Although if I could rewind time id get pyjama cardinals..!

I dont have filter stocks atm and tank has been up just under 6 months.

Beginning to think I need a skimmer atm