[stephanie]

I have a tank who flourite dark as my only substrate. Before I put my osmocote tabs in I was vacuuming the flourite, mostly to get the silt out that rinsing didn't catch but now that I have the tabs in my substrate I obviously don't want to suck the osmocote out.

So my dumb question is do you have to vacuum flourite substrate in a planted tank?

 

[Nlewis]

You should really never do and deep vacuuming in a planted tank. The plants will use the left over food, fish poop and detritus as food. Now, you can graze over the substrate and pick up some loose material off the top.

 

[Raymond S.]

For those who don't want it to build up over the sub, passing the siphon hose close
to but not touching the top of the Fluorite just to get that which is sitting on the top
of it is what is usually done.
Once you have any amount of plants you really can't get to that much of the sub
without disturbing roots of plants anyway. But depending on your current detrius/
mulm will build up in corners etc. That you may want to take out with the method
mentioned above. The siphon hose that I use is close to the same size that comes
on a vacuum. I change 5 gallon jugs of water for my weekly WC. I usually skim
at least some of that with one or two gallons of the water that I remove.

 

[stephanie]

OK great. That's what I had thought but I just wanted to be sure. Thank you!