Do I need to clean the gravel in my aquarium?

Question

I used to passive suction the gravel, and it stirred up moderate amounts of debris. However, I recently bought 5 glass shrimp to handle detritus and leftover food. So I was wondering if I needed to bother cleaning the gravel as often, because it clouds the water, and I might accidentally bury or suck up the glass shrimp. I do 20% water changes biweekly and will continue to do that.

Answer 1

Yes you do. When you do water changes, you need to clean the gravel at the same time (The water you remove should be sucked out of the gravel by the gravel siphon because that water is the dirtiest.) There will still be some detritus that will be stirred up that will be left in your tank for your glass shrimp to eat.

Answer 2

While the shrimp will help clean up leftover food and algae, they dont actually eat fish p**p, and whatever they eat doesn't magically vanish, they p**p too.

So you still need to vac the gravel to remove waste.

You may want to look at your technique, if you drag the vacum through the gravel you will stir up a lot of crud. What I do is push the vac straight down into the gravel, then lift it out again. 99% of the disturbed crud gets sucked right up. Then move the Vac to a new spot and repeat. You dont have to get ALL the crud out, just most of it, and if you are down 20% and have only dont 1/2 the tank, dont worry. Start from the other end next week.

Because you aren't moving the vac tube much the fish and shrimps can keep away easily, and you aren't really moving the gravel around.

Ian

Answer 3

yes because your fish will still make waste which can become toxic. you can check by taking a cop stick or scewer and moving the rocks around if you see anything coming up then yes if not then no.

Answer 4

Shrimp don't eat p**p.  You still need to clean it out.

**

Answer 5

yes you will but not very often u can get away with just vacuuming the gravel but agae, dirt etc will still grow on it so best to net it out at least twice a year and give it a good rinse in a sieve or something

good luck i hope this has helped you  

Answer 6

Just let the filter do it all! Thats what the filter was made for, to clean and filter any debris found in the aquarium. Fish don't like to be disturbed or be mess with all the time, because we all know that stress kills!