How Do You Clean Your Bottoms? Uh, wait.....

[64Ivy]

Hey guys! Wonderful new forum, thanks. Anyway, my first question here is how do the rest of you go about removing detritus, cyano, or other debris from underneath the rockwork in very deep tanks? Has anyone ever built a 'vacuum' of sorts, complete with a long handle and various 'attachments' (nozzles, really), that would aid in accomplishing this? If so, I would LOVE to see the plans. And since I have a barebottom tank, disturbing the sandbed is obviously of no concern.

[dgasmd]

64Ivy:

I don't ahve the luxury of a bare bottom set up like you due to lack of finding someone to kick me in the a.... when I was setting up my tank. However, I have a move coming in the next few months and that will solve that problem.
There is a couple of things you can do for what I have seen trying to plan ahead.. You can get a powerhead and connect the output to a small hose. That hose would attach to a piece of pvc with elbows and fitting to suit your needs (sort of like a vaccum cleaner attachments. At the very end of thepipe, you can attach an old toothbrush. You can use the "arm to reach places you can't reach with your hand and brush some with it. The powerhead will help blow things up in the water so that they can be taken out by the other regular filters in your tank including your skimmer or they can be syphoned out.
Another solution is to do the above and then connect some pump to a mechanical filter overnight to "polish the waster". Should work I think.:rollface:

[KenT]

I agree with the powerhead. Every coulple of weeks I will take one and blow in and around all the rocks. It will cloud the tank for a while and alot will be removed by filtration. I also have a lot of flow in the tank to keep things moving around.

[64Ivy]

Okay, next question: Is this method okay in regards to removing pockets of cyano? I've heard that you shouldn't blow this stuff around the tank without some immediate means of export (obviously the overflows should remove MOST of it but...). Or am I being overly cautious?

[uryy4me]

when it comes to going after the stuff "under" rockwork, I have about a 6ft section of 1" tubing that I hook up to one of the bulkheads in my tank serving as a sump return (and I close all other returns off the main return to get really good pressure) and I just blow everything out of there (I also crank up my skimmer way up at the same time getting a nice wet affluent). Sometimes I just leave the tube sitting on the bottom of the tank for a while to give good circulation to areas normally not seeing this. BTW - my tank has about 0-1/2" fine aragonite substrate which does a pretty good job of settling out of the water column so after I stir stuff up under rock I often need to come back and dust some sand off my corals (they do seem to like all this stuff getting stirred up). As for your cyno question, never had it grow under rock and am curious to hear what others have done here.

hth and interested in hearing more about what others are doing!

[Toutouche]

64,
Nope.., you're not being overly cautious. Cyano should not be allowed to spread at all possible. Ideally to remove this, I would shut off all circualtion in the tank and use a syphon instead of blowing. It usually comes out in mats as you suck on it ... uh??? wait....