Pet Forum / Aquaria / General / May 2004

I've only had a 15-gallon tank running for about 2 months, but here is a
couple of thoughts: I have two large pieces of sandstone, some slate,
and a piece of quartz on top of the gravel, which is .5-.75" river
stones with smaller gravel underneath. Running and under-gravel filter.
I haven't had any trouble with algae developing on the gravel itself,
and if you're having too much algae trouble, it raises the first
question of whether or not your tank is located anywhere near a window
which gets direct sunlight. The quartz and slate, obviously, are pretty
slick and don't get dirty. The sandstone does tend to collect debris and
stains of various kinds. I have an "algae brush" which is quite long
(good for leverage) and has pretty heavy-duty scrub pad on it; I used
that just today to scrub the discoloration off of the sandstone. For the
inside of the glass, I've found an actual razor blade (on a stem) works
best; I got a task-specific jobby for $2.39 at my local fish store. If
you're using an under-gravel type filter, you might not want to stir up
the gravel too much when you do water changes. The beneficial bacteria
in there are, well, beneficial, so siphoning off the top layer regularly
with only occasional stirring up of the deepest gravel is a good bet, or
so I hear.

I often find myself in a similar situation. But, having stripped out all the
plants from my tanks when I moved house a while back, I find that I can be a
bit more agressive with my cleaning. A couple of times now I've removed the
fish to the safety of a fermenting bin with a lid and airstone+pump. I then
have free rein to empty the tank, completely wash the gravel, throughly wash
out the filter. However I take care not to go mad with the biofilter media
and ruin the bacterial population. I scrub all the algae from the glass.
Clean the tank lid. Clean the fluorescent tubes and reflectors. The tank is
then refilled with clean, dechlorinated water. The gravel is spotless. The
filters are nice and new. I have fresh carbon for any trace nasties in the
new water.

The fish are aclimated and reintroducted. Hey presto... beautiful tank and a
'fresh' start. It takes quite a long while before I need to do anything so
drastic again. I've held off repopulating the tanks with plants because I
like being able to get them to such a spotless state and I doubt plants
would survive being disturbed as much even if it was only occasionally.

BTW it sorted out my snail problem, but that might also have something to do
with the abscence of plants.