How do people who have bare bottom tanks keep them poop free?
I used to have a bare bottom tank, but my goldfish kept on messing around with the poop, and the filter didn't always do a good job. Now i have a larger tank, and I don't want to constantly have to remove poop that i see with a turkey baster.

I have gravel now, but I would much rather enjoy the bare bottom look

There are three very important factors in keeping your barebottom free of poop:

1--There needs to beat least 100gph total (in mechanical filtration) for every ten gallons of water in the tank.

2--The intake strainer needs to be right at the bottom fo the tank. This allows the water flowing into the strainer to draw bits of poo and uneaten food into the filter to remove it from the tank.

3--The placement of the filter in relation to the currents it creates (or adds to) makes a large difference. Sliding the filter back and forth across the back of the tank (or repositioning the outflow) to different locations causes different flow patterns and poo will collect in different areas.


Another good way to keep the bottom clear of poo is to have multiple filters. Multiple filters creates more points to wich poo is attracted to. For this reason (and several others) It is always better to have several smaller filters than one big one of the same gph output.

Hope this helps!

Another thing that I ended up doing is adding a powerhead at the bottom of the tank. It's an adjustable one, so I keep it pretty low.. just enough to keep the poop movin so the filters can grab it.

I didn't even know that you should set up barebottom tanks that way. Maybe this should be pinned somewhere.

Your right, maybe this does need to be pinned at the top. Consider it done!

Actually, this is the way pretty much any tank should be set up. Not just barebottoms. It's just that its much easier to see the poo and uneaten food in a barebottom.

If any of you have your intakes at midtank level, it would be a wise move to buy extentions tubes and coupler to extend your intakes to the bottom. Or at least get some clear, vinyl tubing to extend it.....

hmmm, i'm going barebottom to see if i like it however i don't have any hob filters, i have a sump. It drains from the top rim of the water so it doesn't really pick anything up unless it floats that way. In my sump i have two filter pads designed for 75 gal+ and the water gets pushed through them. I have a spray bar that goes across the top back of the tank, if i set it to spray down and forward do you think it might help?

Do you mean you have some sort of wet/dry filter or something?

I'm not quite picturing what your describing there.

Is it this:

link 1

or this:

link 2

If it looks anything like what you see in the links, you really dont have much else you can do except aim one of the sraybars or jets towards the bottom of the tank so as to stir up the poo and stuff like your thinking. But remember to keep a still spot down there for resting goldies.......

Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for all your suggestions! I only have a 10gal barebottom right now, so sucking out the poo with the turkey baster isn't too bad yet, but I have to do it every day if I want to keep it looking nice. I am saving for a 40gal, and would like to go barebottom for that as well. So this advice is perfect! I wouldn't have thought of it myself. When I get the 40gal, I will need 400gph filtration? And it is better to get two different ones at 200gph each? I am wondering if this will create to much current for my little babies? They are only 3 and 1/2 inches long from nose to end of tail fin. (bubbleEyes) Does the GPH depend at all on the size of the fish? Also, is there a specific brand of filters that any of you suggest? I can't even figure out what type I have now. It came with the tank that was set up by a friend. And it doesn’t say on the filter itself, I’ve looked everywhere on it.

Thanks to everyone for suggestions and advice!
Emily

Yes, your tank will need a total of 400gph+. And you are also correct about two smaller filters being better than one.

I wouldnt worry too much about current if you are planning to or are providing plenty of silk plants and ornaments to break of the currents a little. If you look closely at any suspended debris in the tankwater, you can se the currents and their swiftness. Also, looking at where the poo and stuff builds up at will give you an idea of where there needs to be more circulation (or the intake needs elongating)

My favorite line of filters are the penguins by Marineland Labs. Here is a link to a 200gph filter that employs a bio-wheel. You can even special order two extra media baskets that will sit in the box to house a good colony of beneficial bacteria. Even without the extra media cartridge, it is still a very good filter.

Penguin 200B

As discussed earlier, you would do good to order the extra intake tube and coupling for each filter. You might need to order those parts specifically from marineland labs.com or find another source. Maybe someone else out there knows a source......

Hope this helps!

your awesome! thanks!

My pleasure!

i have a barebottom 14g too and nothing seems to help removing the poo from the bottom.

I have to vacuum every 3 days with the "vacuum pumper" (my diy invention ) ...

Filter intake strainer is at the bottom, but it also have a cover to protect from suckin up fish that keeps the edge of it a bit higher if u understand what i mean...

any siggestions..??

It will help a bit if I can visualize your tank better:


Can you describe yout tank a bit for us?

Filter name and size?

Ornaments?

How many fish?

How often do you feed?


Actually, a picture would be soooo much help here. Can you provide a pic?


Post back soon.

hope this helps


i use 2 filters. 1 power(left) 1 canister (right).
i feed twice a day.
i vacuum a lot.

I like your set up. I love bare bottom filters but i am the same way about the poop. I dont like the look of it at all. So i chuck about a hand full of gravel in the tank, just enough for the poop to get stuck in and the fish to root around. (Then its not really a bare bottom, but i dont kno, it looks nice)

My filter is pretty good with sucking up the poop. My filter is about 3 inches off the floor of the tank, and the water level comes right to the out put part of the filter. so the current runs strait across the syrface of the water before hitting the far end, and going to the bottom, so everything gets pushed back towards the intake tube. Before i filled the tank this much, i found the cureent would push all the poop and food to the far side of the tank.

Maybe some repositioning of your filters will reap you the desired results. On my 55, the water return are flowing towards the front, and the two intakes are 1/2inch off the bottom positioned along the back. Every bit of poo that settles to the bottom is filtered out within a few hours.

Oh, I forgot to mention, since this thread was started, I decided to go barebottomed myself! Here's a pic:



I know it looks like I have 1 lonely comet in there. I have to take long shots on a nighttime flash setting and all the fish turn into blurs or disappear.....

I LOVE your tank!

ok, how do you guys get your tanks so algae free??? poop is a bother to me too because i am mostly bare bottomed, but all the algae...jeez, it is EVERYWHERE...i have given up keeping it off the bottom of my tank or else i'd be scrubbing it every other day.

Hee hee hee....... I'll never tell!

Nah, really, Ill tell you what my secret is. A nice big pleco! The one I have is a common pleco so he dessimates any and all algae that builds up in my 55 gallon. Not even spot algae stands a chance in there. And spot algae is suppose to be the hardest kind to get off the glass! Anyway, I know commons don't mix well with fancy goldfish but I donot keep any fancies in there. Just two comets, a dojo and two cories. They all root around on the bottom near him and he's just fine with that.

If you want a relatively algae free tank, I highly suggest you get yourself a bristlenose pleco or a rubbernose plec. Either will do great in your tank. A full grown bristle or rubber will take care of a 55 gallon tank rather well. It will take two if they are juveniles. Once they are too big to be housed together, you will have no problem at all selling him to or at a local fish shop. People will pay handsomely for a pleco that size............


Whatcha think?

ok, i will get one!!! i'm tired of looking at all this algae. so...now i need to know WHERE to get one. They don't sell those at wal mart or at my local pet store. I wonder if pet co or pet smart would have them.
-do those things acutally "swim" or do they just suck onto the bottom and sides ?

Most of them will remain pretty well hidden throughout the day and come out to clean at night. I see mine coming out within an hour after lights out. Keep in mind that they cannot subsist for long on tank algae alone. You'll need to supplement its diet with plenty of greens (spinache, romaine lettuce, spring lettuce, cucumber, broccoli, algae and spirolina wafers, etc). They really like it if you add them to veggie clips and stick it to the glass near their favorite hiding places. By the way, ALWAYS maintain a good hiding place/cave/cubby hole that only they can get into so that they can feel they have a safe zone they can retire to.

Depending on how big your tank is, within a couple days, your tank will be algae free and remain that way as long as you have the pleco. By the way, If you get a bristlenose, I suggest getting a male. You will be able to tell the males from the females by the amount of "whiskers" they have surrounding their faces. The males have longer and more pronounces bristles than the females. This growth will keep getting longer and longer until they look like this:



they can get even more pronounced than that even. This is a medium sized one that will get larger.


Good luck!

it looks scary


i am definately going to try to get one soon. will he be able to get all the algea of the intake tubes as well? would a big terracotta flower pot be good for a hiding place? and they won't eat my fishies right? cause Gill really likes to sleep on the bottom at night.

Yep, they will keep every surface in your tank clean and clear from algae. Younger ones might have a tougher time getting spot algae (small, hard algae spots) but as they get larger, they get it easier.

They do look kinda creepy don't they? Course, that the allure that these guys have, they are so grotesque that you can't help but stare at them in awe....


Course, if thats not your thing, you could always try a rubbernose pleco. Here's a good pic of one: rubbernose pleco

Rubbernoses get the same size as busynose or bristlenose. 6-8 inches maximum. They get kinda wide so their caves you provide them with should grow with them. And yes, terra cotta pots make great caves. Break a few til you can get a nice cave formed. You can actually cut them in perfect halves with a mosonry blade on a hack saw. Thats how I made mine in my 55 gallon. Lots of silk plants clogged in one area or the corner provides great cover for them as well.

I saw a large 10" pleco at a pet store once, I can't remember exactly what price he was but it was over $100. I remember thinking - wow! all those members on Koko's must be rich!

Since then I've seen the small ones and they are more reasonabley priced. Q. Do you need a heater to keep a pleco?

If the water in the tank ever drops below the low 70's, yes, a heater should be used. This is for most varieties of pleco.


Yep, some panaques, plecos and the like go for quite the hefty price once they reach full size. Heck even a simple, common pleco can go for 60 bucks (US) and higher once they pass a foot in length.

Paul

aw...the rubbernose is cute!!
i'm gonna head to petsmart tomorrow and see if i can find one.
now, it's about a 45-50 minute drive, is there anything special i should do for transporting it home?

The very best thing for transporting fish (in my opinion) is a cooler. Place the bag into the cooler with a towel wrapped around it on the sides. Close the lid and your garaunteed that the temp will stay stable for at least a couple hours.

By the way, i'm sure you will be able to find one somewhere locally, just be sure to call ahead so you don't waste your time driving so far.........


Good luck

cool, good idea! Thanks Paul

what do you put in those little pots for the plants? i stopped buying plants as the goldfish love uprooting them and cutting off the roots is it earth? or gravel and do they need anything else to stay alive?

Do you mean the ones in the pic of my 55 gallon? If so, none of the plants in that tank are real! They are all from the seagarden series of plants by Aquarium Systems or Penn-Plax plants. I gave up on live plants in my goldie tanks looooong ago.

But, if you wanted to give some real plants a try with the potted method, its very simple. Get yourself some good ol chemical free potting soil and fill each pot to about 1/3 full, add your plants rootball or rockwool cube to it and fill the pot to within 3/4 of an onch of the rim. Then, here's the secret, take pre-sorted, flat river rocks and place them over the gravel in as tight a fitting manner as you can (like a puzzle or mosaic). This will keep your goldies from picking at the gravel and being able to uproot the plant. This will do nothing for the plant if your goldies consider it a tasty treat!

Paul

apparently i will never own a pleco because no stores anywhere near me sell anything but commons

Thats too bad.

Maybe you can get one of the mom and pop fish shops to order you one. I know that most of them around here will do that for customers.

I guess it's just gonna have to take some scrubbing for a while til you can locate one........

yeah your tank is just amazing i keep buying them plants but the goldfish either up root them or find it funny to rip the leaves out! the fake plants i saw all look pretty too much fake to me but i dont know i thought urs were real, could've fooled me thats for sure.

thanks for the advice!

my friend managed to mate those cleaning fish and he has now like 10 of them:D

I used to have a "butterfly pleco" He's real cute and real small. Grows only up to 3" in length. The prob is he passed away. Am not finding a hard time to find a fish like him.

About cleaning glass, i use a scrubber from 3m "scotchbrite". It's used for pots and dishes but they do wonders for my tank. I had to submerge it in water for a few days to make sure its clean. Now my tank looks brand new.


For barebottoms, I would put the inlet hose on one and the outlet hose on the other end of the tank to create a current in my tank and takes care of all the poop.

Daryl,

is that your pleco in that picture? That pic is what promted me to look for one. Is he a certain color or style? I haven't seen *green* before. Do you have to have an algae issue or can you just feed him the other greens and wafers?

Are you referring to the pleco that I linked a photo of above?

If so, I don't think its actually green. It must be the lighting or the camera or something. They dont come in green, that I know of. But, there certainly are a few different species of bristlynose plecos. Last time I checked there were something like 10-15 different species or subspecies........

Oh,m

I am sorry, I was thinking Daryl was replying. I would love to find one that looks simular.

Nice pictures of the bare bottom tanks! I wonder if I should go with that option on my new 100 gallon job! Maybe I'll experiment and do it with one of my smaller tanks once I have all of the gold fish in the new 100 gal tank!

i might try going barebottom!

Keep in mind that it should be done slowly and special attention should be payed to the amount of bio-filtration capacity that the filter/s have. Adding sponges to the filterboxes as per this link: http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...showtopic=26495 REALLY helps make sure the params stay stable. Simply becasue the gravel in an established tank actually holds a pretty sizable amount fo beneficial bacteria..........


For big tanks like a 100 gallon, small areas of gravel (perhaps in some corners and such) can be used to provide asthetic appeal or for goldies to root around in. After all, they DO love to root around in the gravel!

I have a 10 gallon that is pretty much bare bottom. I just have a island of rock in the middle with a small fu dog pagoda on it. I like the bare bottom becuase I can see uneaten food and as you mentioned poo. The way I keep my bare bottom tank pretty clean is to take one of my nets ( I have one to use on the fish and the other for this duty) and I remove any debris I see with the net ( I usually do this once a day) and then I gently stir the water to get any loose particles floating in the water so i can gently move my net back and forth collect the debris. I have an old water pitcher that I got at the dollar store sitting on the floor next to me full of treated water ( for chlorine) so that I can rinse the debris out of the net in the water so I have a clean net before I do the next debris sweep with the net.. I am thinking of going totally bare bottom soon. I think I will keep my little pagoda in there though. It seems cory and whisker my cory cats , like to hide under it at times.

Hi I have a question if anybody knows this, it's about tank cycling & barebotttom tanks, I have a 29 gallon tank, and it's been running for over a month now, the cycling, I dont think, is done yet. I've seen no spikes in the nitrites and nitrates. There are traces of them , the nitrate more than the nitrite, and the amonia ( if I don't overfeed) stays to zero. And of course my tank I keep barebottom, and i'm wondering if my tank has not cycled yet ,could it be that the barebottom is somehow delaying the process, if anybody knows this please let me know! It would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Stephanie

My overworked pleco wintered with my comets outside. The water temp was below 50F quite a few times. He's still here in the spring, and almost 5" long now.


I guess some are more hardy than others.

What kind of filtration are you using? cause, personally speaking, I find barebottom tanks cycle faster than a fully furnished tank does... especially if you use sponge filtration that has been seeded with "crud" from an already matured sponge (this is the sort of filtration I used in mine and it cycled in less than three weeks)

What are the highest levels of nitrite & nitrate levesls anybody has seen in their tanks? Let me know , the nitrate in my tank wate,r the highest i've see it go is under 5 maybe a 2.5. The nitrite between 0 & 0.1 . For filtration ,I use carbon filters , and also a big bio fiber pad that mounts behind my filter. They're Aqua-tech EZ-change filter cartriges. Could it be that my cycling is done? I dont really know

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I have read that a pleco can climb on top of the goldfish and clean off their slime during the night when the fish are sleeping. That opens the way for the fish to become sick.

That is exactly correct..... A common pleco, as it gets bigger, may actually kill some goldfish. Goldfish sleep, motionless at night - often on the bottom of the tank. A pleco is very active at night - and it is a "cleaner" - it eats waste. To the pleco, meat sitting on the bottom of the tank is fair game. They can chew up a goldfish pretty badly in one night flat.

Common Plecos can also get extraordinarily LARGE. I have seen 14 inchers and I have heard of even bigger ones.....

Toothless, you have got to tell me what lights are you using? It looks beautiful! Mine, as you already seen, is kinda an aweful light coloration. I like the way your lights make the tank more pretty.

Thunder

Just to let you know, toothless hasn't been on since may