Maybe you shoudl classify large aquaria. In normal people circles I am crazy
for having a 90 gallon tank. In fish circles I feel like a poser because I
only have 1 tank. :~) There is an aquarium society that meets right down the
street from me and I do not go to their meetings because I feel like a poser
with only one tank lol.

as far as cleaning it though... I previously had a very large texas cichlid,
an african orange sided pike cichlid and a big ass pleco in it. So we are
looking at 3 fish over a foot long and who are messy.I ran a ugf powered by
300 gph powerheads as well as 2 magnum 350 canister filters with one of them
hooked up to a bio wheel 60. My tank has a full oak canopy and a ghetto hood
I made myself to just get buy so it is impossible to clean without taking
all of that out which is a serious pain so I did this to lessen the amount I
would have ot monkey with it: My powerheads on my ugf let me reverse the
flow of the so I would do that for a week - 3 weeks which woudl push all the
gunk out of the rocks in my subsrate. This also meant detrius did not settle
to the bottom and everything ended up in the caniter filters eventually
which I could change without taking apart anything on my tank. Only downside
to this was that I had detrius suspended in the tank regularly, not
unnatractive but not crystal clear either. When company was expected I would
undo the reverse flow on my ugf and make the powerhead work the "normal"
way. This sucked all suspended detrius back into the gravel within a hour
and the water went back to crystal.

I now have an african set up in there with the same filtration... just
started doing the reverse flow thing as they have all grown to adulthood and
being messy now. tank has only been set up about a year and I got them all
when they were under and inch so no need for serious maintenance till
recently.


"jk" wrote in message
t...
I'm curious about your cleaning routines. What do you all do with your
large tanks, with large fish, that tend to get very dirty quickly? Big
fish
require more food, create more waste, and stir up the bottom more. Do you
simply do a major cleaning as often as once a week?

--
JK Sinrod NY
Sinrod Stained Glass
www.sinrodstudios.com
Coney Island Memories
www.sinrodstudios.com/coneymemories