tricks for cleaning up after wood eating plecos.

[hotplecogirl]

I have two large wood eating pleco tanks.A 450 and a 265 gallon tank.I find myself vacuuming poop every 5 days?

I would love to hear everyone's tricks for cleaning up after these wood eating poop machines.

I do have the out takes of the filters all going in the same direction,making a calm spot for wood debris vacuuming.

[L number Banana]

You might have the answer right there
I put a little piece of rigid screen in my filter ahead of everything else and just bang the filter against the side of the trash every once in a while.
I made it out of a piece or rigid plastic by cutting out the screen hole and stapling the screen around the edges. It seems to catch all the brown woodglue like stuff from my p.maccus' before it clogs the poly and bio filter.

[DJ-don]

i find that if you have external filters, dont use the filter padding the company of the filter makes if you get what i mean

get some filter wool. that stuff is easy to clean and catches more of the poo

[krazyGeoff]

I find myself vacuuming poop every 5 days?

You are lucky hotplecogirl, I find myself vacuuming poop every day

[MatsP]

Despite being one of the least bioload tanks, my P. maccus tank is the dirtiest of all of my tanks - it's only got 5 small fish in 100 liters of water, and similar size tanks have about double that. I don't clean it out nearly as much as I should, and it's got "sawdust drifts" in there.

I can't imagine what it would be like with a larger wood eater, really.

One trick I think works is to add circulation pump (something like the Eheim Compact/Compact+ series) to circulate the water more, which will keep the much in suspension rather than settle on the bottom - obviously, you then need a filter that can cope with the muck, and you probably need to clear out the filter a lot more often. Perhaps still better to vacuum it out...

--
Mats

[andywoolloo]

I thought the same thing Geoff, I am every day also!

Sorry hotpl*cogirl, I am a bit jealous of your once a week routine.

[Farid]

hi there,
that's why i decided to set um a foam-matfilter in my 900L tank so i can take out peace by peace to clean my system...

i keep 9 L90 in this tank...10x L75 and new...13 Geophagus red head youngers , 7x satanoperca youngsters...

messing up day by day ...

farid

[leonsmith]

My rusty plec is a messy bugger i have invested in a vaccum which i use weekly when i do my water changes, i think they should find a poo eating fish lol

[DJ-don]

a friend in melbourne says she uses an UGF connected to a external filter in her L104 breeding tank

not too shabby idea i say!
you only have to clean your filter and not so much your gravel!

[Carp37]

I have to vacuum the gravel/rinse out filter sponges every four days for my Panaque maccus/P. nigrolineatus, and still had problems with the gravel going anaerobic. Reducing the depth of substrate has substantially increased water quality, but I still need to remove all the decor every 3 weeks or so to thoroughly vacuum the substrate.

[MatsP]

a friend in melbourne says she uses an UGF connected to a external filter in her L104 breeding tank

not too shabby idea i say!
you only have to clean your filter and not so much your gravel!

Except that it's going to clog the gravel quite badly, so you still end up vacuuming the gravel. I'd rather vacuum up a pile of sawdust on top of the gravel/sand, rather than IN it.

--
Mats

[hotplecogirl]

I am going to try and vacuume every day and see if that is easier then vacuuming for over an hour once a week.

[2wheelsx2]

I have 2 Koralia powerheads (a 1 and a 2) in my 125 gallon, plus a Fluval FX5 and an Eheim 2028 and will be adding a Rena Xp3 that I haven't been using. My gravel actually is not bad, but my filters.....yuck.

[matthewfaulkner]

For my bigger Panaque community tank I use a 6000lph solids handling pump in the tank feeding a pressurised pond filter. The pump is off the bottom, and the flow (also from an Eheim pro3) pushes all the waste to below and around the pump. Some is taken up by the pump but as much as I can I siphon it out, daily if I have the motivation. In my smaller Panaque/plec community tank I use a Eheim powerline 2252 (1200lph) internal, the flow from 3 externals helps push the waste to the internal. And again I try and syphon as much as I can, as often as I can.

In order to properly cope with Panaque waste you need specially designed setups like what Farid and Haavard use, gravity fed sumps or filter rigs. The best methods are the ones that are able to physically remove to waste before it has time to block filters and degrade in the water.

[Suckermouth]

hi there,
that's why i decided to set um a foam-matfilter in my 900L tank so i can take out peace by peace to clean my system...

i keep 9 L90 in this tank...10x L75 and new...13 Geophagus red head youngers , 7x satanoperca youngsters...

messing up day by day ...

farid

I'm curious... Do you think the eartheaters have any effect by moving around some of the detritus and sediments that might have settled?

[Bas Pels]

I think all fishes swimming close to the sand will assist bringing any debris to the pump.

In fact, that vare way of thought made me looking for Platydoras, 20 years back

[andywoolloo]

yeah and actually I have added powerheads or re positioned powerheads to hit some areas where poo and food seem to settle and it swirls it up into the intakes. And now that I think of it it's the common pl*cos tank that has big poo bits every day, the clown tank i do once a week and it has a good flow.

[hotplecogirl]

seems my best bet is vacuuming up poop every day,which is not a problem as i actually enjoy it.It all seems to settle in the center of my tank so its easy enough to vacuum out.By making the poop able to go into the filters just means cleaning the filters more often.I suppose you really need to love these wood poop machines and i really do.