Time for me to do my first partial water change and clean up the debris on floor of tank. 2 questions. 1. Should I take Valentino out of the tank for the water change or leave him in? 2. Best way to suck the debris up. Someone suggested a turkey baster.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1o88g07
Posted by roopps
2 Comments
gravel vac! go to petco and grab one, or go on amazon!! :)))
Leave him in the tank.
Turkey baster works, usually I would use the water change siphon to suck the detritus up, but with sand that might not work. You could try stirring a bit to lift the detritus off the bottom and then hold the siphon low in the water to try to suck up the detritus before it settles back down.
Also, if this is your first water change, don’t make the rookie mistake of blindly and aggressively cleaning out your filter when you do the water change. If the filter is still flowing fine *just don’t clean it*. And if it is clogged, be very careful with how you clean out the big foam block. No matter what the product packaging said the foam was for, 95% of your filter bacteria are living in that foam. Be gentle, just a couple gentle squeezes in a bucket of still water. If you squeeze that foam out until brown stuff stops coming out, you are going to regret it.