My fish tank is dirty and my fish are afraid.. please read on...?

Question

they are afraid of the net and idk how i should clean the tank

i was thinking taking out all the rocks and washing them off and letting the filter clean everything but im not sure.

advice would be great!

Answer 1

Its called a siphon, ones for aquariums are sold at a petstore near you. You aren't supposed to remove the fish and scrub the tank. Regular cleaning of a tank means removing 25% of the water, and replacing it with fresh, dechlorinated water. Fish don't have to be removed for this. You leave them be, suck out water and mulm on the bottom, and replace the water.

This should be done once a week. A tank without a weekly 25% water change is not a healthy tank.

I want to clarify that a filter doesn't exactly 'clean' the water. A filter is a place in the tank that beneficial bacteria grow in large numbers. They grow on the sponge, floss, pad, etc. They consume fish waste (or what is decomposes into, ammonia), and turn it into something less harmful, nitrate, in a process called the nitrogen cycle. Nitrate can only be removed from the tank by water changes, or fast growing plants like hornwort and duckweed. Because of this bacteria, you /never/ want to remove the filter media, other than to lightly rinse it out in used tank water. Replacing it looses that good bacteria, and creates a harmful tank.

Answer 2

take the gravel out with a net and put it in a huge bucket and run it under water from a mud sink and the flow should do the rest, while that is cleaning scrub the sides, but never change all of the water at once the shock of the levels changing can kill the fish aswell as the temperature, the filter will clean the water for you but you may need to change the cartridge... petco sells a sponge on a stick to scrub the walls and if they are afraid of the net and you have no other option get 2 nets and scare them into one with the other

Answer 3

Get a gravel vacuum. Place the vacuum tube so it is lying horizontally in the water. Move the vacuum back and forth across the tank, while under water to create a water vacuum. There is a hose thta attaches to the end of the vacuum tube, make sure the hose is put in a bucket and that the bucket it lower than the fish tank, that will help you get better suction.

Remove 50% of the water. Place the vacuum in the gravel, you will see if sucks up waste, such as food. Move the vacuum to different places in the gravel.

Once you remove 50% of the water, refill the tank with dechlorinated water.

Once you get the hang of it, you can do 20% weekly water changes to keep the tank clean.