Question of the Week Spring Cleaning Time! What are you doing to your tank this spring?

[Art]

Spring cleaning for a planted aquarium can be such a rewarding process! It’s a great time to evaluate the health of your ecosystem, trim and re-evaluate plants and their locations. Perhaps a little re-aquascaping?

Have you planned a specific maintenance routine or are you thinking of adding new elements to refresh your planted aquarium?

 

[Onima1]

With longer days and a sunny, dry and warm spring (becoming more common in the UK), I tend to want to spend time outside rather than inside. Paradoxically, any major work on the aquascapes tends to come in the short dark days of winter. Having said that I am reflecting on a few tanks and thinking of taking out a few cryptocoryne. As the weather is warm enough post any excess to others. I hate composting aquatic plants!

 

[FrankZ]

I need to get my but in gear and start scaling again and updating my journal. That slime crap took the wind out of my sails so I’ve been on cruise control and not really involved. I need to stop it and get back into what I enjoy.

Starting with some new plants…

 

[Pepere]

I am continuing to wait for my 75 gallon tank to cycle. Once nitrifying bacteria are set I will add some livestock and some trimmings from other tanks.

Mostly I am going to let it sit and continue to mature before aquascaping it.. and waiting on anything major on the other two tanks as well as some plants and livestock will end up transferring as well..

Honestly I dont know what exactly I will do with the other two…. I may stop CO2 on one of them and go all simple easy plants and go with tiger barbs.

Time will tell, no firm plans on that.

I am planning an taking down my 20 high that is on the bottom tier of the cabinet. Servicing that tank at floor level is more than I care to do anymore. It was meant to be there for the grandkids to enjoy, however both they and I are getting older. They can see the elevated tanks better now as they are older, and my working at floor level is getting more unpleasant as I get older as well…

 

[Kwyet]

I’m heading home today after being gone 2 1/2 weeks, so I’ll be taking stock of everything and getting things back in shape. I’ve been holding off on getting any new plants or fish until I was sure I wouldn’t be gone for any more long periods, and barring unforeseen circumstances I think that’s the case now. I’m excited to get back home and start planning and doing again!

 

[Phish Tank]

Like @Onima1 i do major tank projects in winter. I tend to travel more in summer so by Spring I like to start getting my tank ready for summer autopilot stretches of time. That means no new fish or plants for a while, no big changes in lights, feeding or co2, and some extra thorough cleaning every week.

 

[Uncle_R]

Can’t seem to beat the BBA on my small leaf Anubias. Time to look for something else small for my front right corner.

 

[anewbie]

The longest day is no different from the shortest as i do weekly water changes et all. The only advantage of warmer weather is i'll probably place an order for some uncommon crypts from indonesia. They won't be of much interest to most since they mostly require blackwater but with 14 blackwater aquariums - just the ticket

Btw I have this common but nameless crypt growing emersed - the dark green one with brown center not the flamingo next to it:



And this emersed b. helena:



Nice plant don't you agree. Maybe i should grow all my plants emersed

 

[GreggZ]

As a couple of others have said as the weather changes I have less time for the tank.

Golf season has already started, soon my outdoor landscaping and yard maintenance will kick into gear, and before long will get out on the lake.

That being said the fiddling with the tank never ends and doesn't care how much time I have. And the tank is in my den so it's in a place where it's always visible. Both a blessing and a curse sometimes.

So as usual regular water changes and trimming, just have to squeeze it in when I can. If anything when I trim I tend to hack things down shorter than usual so that I can stretch things out a bit. I also shorten my peak high light time frame as that tends to slow down the growth a bit.

So for me there really is no spring cleaning..........it's more when the fall comes and temps drop that I do my big major projects.

 

[Joel Armstrong]

I recently completed a substrate clean of the top layer only, followed by several large water changes. Removed a few species, as I've usually had too many.

I'm learning so much in this hobby, and I've still got a lot to learn to achieve my goals for the tank. Feels like 2 steps forward then 1 or 2 steps back again..

Still have some growth issues here and there, then the plants bounce back. There's something I'm doing, or not doing, which causes these issues.. it's part of the learning curve I guess.

I've been trying my best to keep the tank as clean as I can, seems to fix most issues I think.

 

[SkaleyAquatics]

Right now all my planted tanks are just growing out plants. The 180 has a few too many species and I do need to start playing with layout but I am battling a bacterial bloom currently, so water changes and trimming in the only things taking place.

The fish room has become much more of Sean' hobby room as now it houses isopods, wabi kusa, emersed grown plants, and house plants. I'm struggling right decide on a layout when I do get around to redoing the room. I'm trying to maximize space for fish breeding, farm tanks, live food cultures, isopods and house plants. Not So easy to do in such a small space.

These are just 4 of my 25 house plants in the fish room:

 

[anglers]

As was previously mentioned I think the first thing on my agenda is a substrate clean and change of some foreground sand. I have recently started to use a pump for my water changes so another point on my agenda is to try to reuse the tank water for garden plants.

 

[*Ci*]

Like others, I do my major tank projects during the long, dark, wet and cold winter days here in the PacNW, and save the springtime for starting up the garden, re-potting bonsai and attending to the koi pond.
Up until right about now, my goal has been to get my indoor tanks stabilized so that they function smoothly with less attention than they have been getting (never skimping on regular maintenance, of course!)
The discus tank conversion is done, the fish seem to be thriving, and the w/c routine has been simplified to the point where it seems like no chore at all!


The Osaka 260 jungle has some new fish as well, 10 more black neons and 3 young angelfish. It had an influx of extra plants when I thinned out the discus tank, and is truly an over grown jungle now - organized chaos! But for all that, most of the plants are very low maintenance. This tank is easy



My vintage Chrome Metaframe “Shrimp Playground” is really easy as well. A weekly water change and occasionally yanking out handfulls of moss, subwassertang and hydrocotyle. The blue dream shrimp take care of themselves.


And finally, the “Forest Jewell”, a vintage 1900’s cast iron nano tank. If you have followed my journal, I had stepped put of my comfort zone and created a stick and twig forest diorama in this tank, but my god, what a maintenance nightmare it was! Nearly impossible to syphon in between all the trunks and roots and so the mulm was building and algae was rearing its ugly head. I was not happy with the amount of work it took on this tiniest of all my tanks, so I ditched the forest, put in some old ADA Aquasoil I had, started a Dutch - ish garden, and put a black crowntail betta in (), always my first choice of fauna for this tank.



It doesn’t feel like anything too special, and it is still proportionately too much work, but I am happier with the tank for now, and we’ll see how it evolves in this iteration.

With everything just how I like it, I can devote myself to the outdoors for the next 4 months or so, all the while planning what I may do for new tank projects next fall and winter!

 

[Tim Harrison]

Haven't flooded my new scape yet. but once it's up and running (next week), it'll be a daily spring clean for the first week or so, and thereafter weekly. Staying on top of maintenance is essential in an injected tank. There's not much wriggle room and it can all go south pretty quickly. At least until it's matured and become more stable and robust. That usually takes about 3 months.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Staying on top of maintenance is essential in an injected tank. There's not much wriggle room and it can all go south pretty quickly. At least until it's matured and become more stable and robust. That usually takes about 3 months.

I have to agree, I’m a prime example of what happens when you let it go for weeks on end with no maintenance. Lucky for me, the scape has matured and usually with a grueling maintenance session and removal of visible algae I can get it back on track within a couple weeks or less. At the early stages, it would be a recipe for disaster as indicated. I’ll post in my journal soon of where I’m at currently, the glass is nice and green in honor of St. Patrick’s day and spring time.

 

[RickyV]

Haven't had much time for this tank all year unfortunately. No fertilization, CO2, water changes, etc. I think I've done two big trims on the rotalas this year just to keep them from leaving the tank. Plant health isn't perfect but the tank has been ok. I'm excited to finally get to spend more time on this tank once I'm done with school in a month.

 

[Bolbi]

Spring is usually the time of year when I put the final touches on my aquascapes. With the competition deadline approaching, everything needs to be completed and ready for the final photo. These are mostly the kind of worries I enjoy.

 

[Yugang]

Sometime need to chop it down, and start all over again.

 

[TRyan]

I did a rescape. Added a manzanita wood piece, got rid of 3 swords in favor of 2 different ones, added some crypt balansae, retrospiralis and usteriana. Waiting for them to grow taller at the moment.

Been really frustrated with an outbreak of planaria! What a gross, disgusting parasite. I don't have a tank to put my snails and shrimp in, so haven't dozed the tank with No Planaria. I've been trapping the little suckers for 3 weeks now. The numbers are really dropping, but I don't think I'll ever get rid of them using only traps. I honestly think the blood worm cubes I was feeding had planaria eggs in them. Is this a possiblity? At the time I noticed them, I hadn't added any new plants for quite a while. The only thing I changed was started to feel blood worm cubes.

 

[DTWGulo]

Rebuilding a paludarium, which is now just a bare enclosure. I’ll make a build thread as I go.
Otherwise cleaning and trimming like always.