Dirty tanks

"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

Arrange your filtration so that you have more pick-up power.
Powerfilters are good for this because they typically run about 5x the
tank volume. Add an extension to the intake pipe to get it lower into
deep tanks. Sand substrate can be useful. Arrange the sand and
filtration inlet/outlet so any detritus slides from the back of the tank
to the front, and then along the front to one side (where the intake is
located). Bare bottom tanks also work. You best solution will probably
be a combination of filters, such as canister -or- powerfilter (for good
intake) and a powerhead -or- canister (to direct horizontal currents).

Another method is piping your filter system inlet (typically a canister)
to UGF plates and covering the plates with medium-large river stones.
Any detritus will fall through the river stones and into your filter.
This system is application specific, as it does not work with bottom
feeders well, however it does work with large fish whose food does not
reach the substrate often. It also eliminates the need to gravel vacuum,
and if you add a T valve at the canister intake, you have a convenient
'bib' to drain water for your weekly water changes. With a couple of
valves, you can fix it so that your water changes backwash the filter,
reducing your filter maintenance, and more efficiently getting rid of
unwanted DOCs piling up in your filter media. If you want to be more
certain that uneaten food is not getting 'vacuumed' then shut the filter
off while feeding. I have one of my tanks on this type of a system and I
use a timer which holds my filters off for 5 minutes.

hth
NetMax