Regular Member ciscokidd Posted December 4, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 4, 2006 i was doing my weekly gravel vacuum and i got so tired about the amount of poop you never really "get" . so i put my 2 fish in a bowl while i emptied/scrubbed my tank i also took out the gravel and i LOVE it! so far the turkey baster is working good for the poop cleaning, and i like it so much more than my graveled tank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member bettaqueen Posted December 4, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 4, 2006 Congrats. I had a bare bottom too when I kept my goldies. It is not only beautiful but easy to clean as you mentioned. I used to go in the tank with a turkey baster and clean the poo and uneaten food out too and it kept the tank looking pretty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member viscosity2004 Posted December 4, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 4, 2006 I love my barebottom too, very easy to keep clean. Be careful though if you took out all your gravel at once, you may experience a bump in your cycle since the bacteria on the top layer of your gravel is now gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member bettaqueen Posted December 4, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 4, 2006 yup the way I went eventually bare bottom was to remove a handful or two each time I did a water change untill it was completely bare bottomed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Tinkokeshi Posted December 4, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 4, 2006 i was doing my weekly gravel vacuum and i got so tired about the amount of poop you never really "get" . so i put my 2 fish in a bowl while i emptied/scrubbed my tank i also took out the gravel and i LOVE it! so far the turkey baster is working good for the poop cleaning, and i like it so much more than my graveled tank bare bottom is great! in case you get bored of having a bare bottom tank, some of us put plants in small jars or planters and decorate that way. or you can put in one or two large river rocks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member ciscokidd Posted December 5, 2006 Author Regular Member Share Posted December 5, 2006 i tried to do it gradually although whenever i took a handful of gravel out, the dye from the gravel (which i rinsed ALOT before i put in) would make the water blueish, and alot of poop (which i thought was clean =/) made the water real dirty.So i couldnt have my fish in that so i decided to do it all at once. I was having extremely high nitrite problems as well, so now its at zero again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member CometKeeper Posted December 5, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 5, 2006 Bare-bottom rocks! I lowered my filter uptakes to the bottom and they do all the vaccuming for me! It took a little getting used to but I reminded myself that the tank is for the safety/well-being of my fish. If one were to choke on gravel or a marble, I'd croak! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member lepirin Posted December 5, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 5, 2006 Congratulations on your barebottom! I know I'll never go back to gravel, there is just no way I want to be a pooper scooper again. When I upgraded my tank, I didn't buy new gravel, I transfered the gravel I had in order to help cycle the new filters by keeping as much bacteria as possible, and then a month later I removed it all in one go, it released *so* much poop that I had no clue was even in there. Now the filters suck up all the poop and I don't even have to use a vac when I water change. Now I've got my 40 gallon barebottom save for a few small pieces of gravel which I was too lazy to pick up (I really need to find someone with 23 inch arms to reach the bottom of the tank), and a 10 gallon with absolutely nothing in the bottom running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member denniss Posted December 5, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 5, 2006 I'm slowly going to barebottom a bit at a time. It is amazing as I remove gravel with each waterchange how much gunk (containing bacteria, algae, and other stuff) is in the gravel. One thing that occurs to me is that there is an awful lot of surface area in the gravel and probably a lot of biofiltration occuring there. As I remove the gravel, the burden of that biofiltration shifts to other surfaces in the tank, notably the filters. Strikes me that one downside of the barebottom approach is the need to have really good biofilters, and to maintain the bacterial colonies in those filters without interruption. With a lot of gravel and a lot of plants, the bio-wheel in my Emporer 280 has remarkably little growth on it after two years. I predict that this will change as I complete the process of removing the gravel (and a lot of the excess plant growth). Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member CometKeeper Posted December 5, 2006 Regular Member Share Posted December 5, 2006 Denniss and Nenn are exactly right. I removed all of my river rock at once and crashed my cycle -specifically, the nitrobacter colony was wiped out. I'll never regret it, though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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