Poop-eating Creatures?

[Flawed_Artist]

I know one person who hooks up two Fluval 404s to the intake stems on his undergravel filters, and uses a fine mesh to put over the UGF plate. He then layers this plate with 2-3 inches of the finest sand that the mesh will take. He then only has to clean his Fluvals often, but he says that there is virtually no substrate cleaning at all.

If the goal is to *reduce* the need for these cleanings to say, once a month or so, I think this is an awesome idea. It's ingenious. This person had two 220s, a 180ish bowfront, a 175, and more than a dozen smaller tanks, with fish ranging from Africans to discus, from fresh to salt - and he's had no problems so far, for years, he's said.

[darkdep]

Pegasus:  I swear, you should rent out that crazy pleco of yours.  No wonder he can clean your tanks so quick...he's as big as a volkswagen.

I had thought about doing an undergravel jet setup to help keep the substrate poop-free, but got impatient.

I don't know that minimizing cleaning is my goal...but as I have mentioned other times, I'm a bit of an environmentalist and have a facination for "natural" solutions.  i.e the idea of putting a pleco in a tank to maintain green algae is, IMHO, a much more "natural" solution than a weekly scrubbing...if that makes sense.  After all, a fish tank is a small, enclosed biodome of sorts, I like trying to come up with the "perfectly recycled environment".

I think the MTS might work well.  I can't wait to try them.

[kennyman]

The natural detritus cycle goes alot further than snails

[darkdep]

hehe I know, I just like seeing how far along you can go in an aquarium.