Cleaning question -- decorations

[Emerson]

Hi there,
I have a question for those of you who have a 5+ gallon tank with larger decorations.

Napoleon's tank is somewhat heavily decorated with two large castles, a smaller castle, and a small silk plant. The two large castles in particular are hard to clean around, and I'm having trouble getting my turkey baster behind them to suction the gravel. Can anyone suggest a solution to this? Because of their size, they would not be easy to remove, and tilting them (to reach behind) requires care not to bump into an inquisitive little Betta. LOL

Does anyone else have a similar problem? If so, do you just suction around the decorations as best you can, or do you remove them from the tank every time you clean?

Thanks!

sef

[ana]

i cant use castles in my 10 gallon anymore, i have a shy placo who lives in those i never see her and i worry

when i did though, i took it out at each cleaning and rinsed it well with hot water as i do with their silk plants

[Betta MVP]

Do they have holes in them that Napoleon can swim in and out of or any other way that poo can get under them? If not, I wouldn't worry too much about moving them. If he can get inside them and poo gets under them, then taking them out once a month and cleaning under them would be ok. I wouldn't mess with taking them out every single time you clean. You may want to remove Napoleon when you do this though so he doesn't accidently get in the way. And they say curiousity killed the CAT? LOL

[Denise]

Hi Sef,

My bettas are in one gallon bowls, but my goldfish are in a ten gallon aquarium. I do not have a pleco, so I am always fighting algae, especially in the warm weather. I have a new system that is working great. I have two complete sets of different decorations and artificial plants for their tank. I do a partial cleaning every week, and every week I pull out the decorations and plants and put the new ones in after I vacuum the gravel. Then I rinse the other ones and let them dry out for next week and they don't get any algae this way. If you have to scrub your castles and rock formation decorations, the paint starts to come off and they look awful. My fish are healthy and their water condition is fine, so I think I am keeping plenty of good bacteria in the filter and gravel and not upsetting the tank by pulling out the decorations. By the way, when I remove the decorations, lots of tiny debris comes floating out of the gravel, so it must be collecting under the decorations. For this reason, I think you should remove the castles every couple of weeks and in the meantime, push the sypon under and around them as best you can. One betta will not make nearly as much waste as two big goldfish, plus a lot of goldfish food goes down into the gravel since they like sinking food, but with bettas the food is eaten from the top and almost never goes down into the gravel. I think you should be okay going around the castles and take them out every couple of weeks, or a month tops, and rinse them and vacuum really good. If you start to see algae on the castles, you will want to remove them and rinse them good before it gets too bad and ruins them. All the best to you and Napoleon