Gravel vac with fry?

[Savanna]

Any advice on how to gravel vac without sucking up fry? I have several different stages of rasbora fry scattered along the bottom of my 65 gallon. I'd like to vacuum the substrate to clean up any leftover frozen baby brine shrimp stuck in there, but the tank is too tall for me to simultaneously vacuum while watching for fry from the side. It is a planted tank, but I only started it up a month ago so my plants aren't very big. What's the best way to go about cleaning the substrate, or should I just leave it? 

[MickS77]

I'd say just leave it 👍

[RovingGinger]

I would say just leave it, otherwise you will have to siphon into a bucket and then fish out the fry that just went for a fun waterslide. I use mesh over my hose when siphoning in tanks with fry, but I am not going for chunks.

 This thread convinced me that I never needed to actually gravel vac...

 

[Savanna]

8 minutes ago, RovingGinger said:

I would say just leave it, otherwise you will have to siphon into a bucket and then fish out the fry that just went for a fun waterslide. I use mesh over my hose when siphoning in tanks with fry, but I am not going for chunks.

 This thread convinced me that I never needed to actually gravel vac...

 

I tried telling myself I wasn't going to gravel vac with this tank because I wanted it to end up heavily planted and it would be fine, but seeing the snail poop and pieces of plants that have died off is driving me insane 

[Brandy]

8 minutes ago, Savanna said:

I tried telling myself I wasn't going to gravel vac with this tank because I wanted it to end up heavily planted and it would be fine, but seeing the snail poop and pieces of plants that have died off is driving me insane 

Go with the bucket routine then.

I am not a gravel vac person usually, but I have one tank with a GIANT piece of driftwood. It makes tannins and a ton of mulm, overwhelming the canister filter rapidly, leading to tons of particles in the water. 

I sometimes regret putting it in...almost. It is harder to keep up with that than any other aspect of my routine. I still don't gravel vac, I figure if it is trapped in the gravel it isn't circulating. I clean all the surfaces and plants, and service the filter constantly. I tell myself one day it will stabilize...right?

[Fonske]

On 10/3/2020 at 1:00 AM, Savanna said:

I tried telling myself I wasn't going to gravel vac with this tank because I wanted it to end up heavily planted and it would be fine, but seeing the snail poop and pieces of plants that have died off is driving me insane 

I am a gravel vac maniac for the same reason, I hate the dirty gravel look. My solution to the fry problem was to set up a separate 2.5g fry-only tank with no substrate, plus the bucket routine to be 100% safe.  More work with water changes in the tiny tank, for sure, but the clean main tank was worth it.  Also, maybe a breeder box for the fry could be another option? There is a recent video of Dean presenting one on More Aquarium Co-op channel.

[Streetwise]

Make peace with the mulm.

[Savanna]

8 hours ago, Fonske said:

I am a gravel vac maniac for the same reason, I hate the dirty gravel look. My solution to the fry problem was to set up a separate 2.5g fry-only tank with no substrate, plus the bucket routine to be 100% safe.  More work with water changes in the tiny tank, for sure, but the clean main tank was worth it.  Also, maybe a breeder box for the fry could be another option? There is a recent video of Dean presenting one on More Aquarium Co-op channel.

I had my original fry in a breeder box, but they were growing much slower and had way less color than the ones that were free swimming at the bottom of the tank (they were spawned after I moved the fish from the 10g to the 65g) so I ended up just dumping them out with the others. I'm a dummy and got a tall tank so it would be nearly impossible to net those microscopic fry from the bottom 😅