Do you vacuum your substrate?

[Art]

Some say maintaining a clean substrate is critical others say it kills the ecology. What do you do and why?

 

[Hanuman]

Doing superficial vacuum at every WC does not IMO cause any issues. You are simply removing excess organic decaying matter which when accumulated cause more problems to the root system of plants. Some sensitive plants are in fact very sensitive to this and prefer to have a clean substrate so to speak.

 

[Nick]

The owners of the tanks that look good and I like mention cleaning at least part of their substrate with a water change, like Hanuman suggested. I intend to do the same in the hope of getting similar results.

I guess if it's routinely done the ecology adapts to less polluted/clean conditions. Maybe going from the extreme of a substrate loaded in waste to very clean and then waiting for it to saturate back creates issues?
Sorry for my ignorance, but in planted tanks what exactly is the issue with not having a ecology adapted to a substrate full of waste?(given that we provide enough fertilizers to our plants)

 

[ayman.roshdy]

I used to vacuum in the weekly maintenance, then started to be lazy and stopped vacuuming, but what I noticed is that the lack of vacuuming doesn't affect anything, perhaps because I have a large cleanup crew !

 

[Aquascape_SG]

I used to vacuum in the weekly maintenance, then started to be lazy and stopped vacuuming, but what I noticed is that the lack of vacuuming doesn't affect anything, perhaps because I have a large cleanup crew !

Can please list the cleanup crew in your tank?
I have about 8 to 9 Oto catfish, some mix of helmet, bladder and nerite snails in my 200 gal tank. Sadly I can't have shrimps. The 20+ angels would snack on them in a jiffy.

 

[GreggZ]

Doing superficial vacuum at every WC does not IMO cause any issues. You are simply removing excess organic decaying matter which when accumulated cause more problems to the root system of plants. Some sensitive plants are in fact very sensitive to this and prefer to have a clean substrate so to speak.

I agree. There are various levels of vacuuming.

A light vac just lifting detritus from the substrate is one thing, digging in deep and releasing all kinds of stuff into the water column is another.

I do a very light vac with every water change. And every so often when I pull up a group that hasn't been trimmed in a while I give that area a good deep vac. But only a small area at a time. When you stir up too much gunk it can create issues.

 

[fablau]

This is a very good question. I vacuum once in a while only where I see to much detritus. I may go up to 1 inch deep if I see a lot of stuff coming up…. But keep in mind, I have an inert substrate (black blasting diamond sand), if you have an organic substrate you may be more superficial to avoid removing “the good stuff” you may want to keep