I have a decent sized community tank. It’s easy enough cleaning the outside and changing the water, but does anyone have any suggestions for cleaning the inside walls, especially near the top rim. I don’t wanna let any chemicals get in the tank, but using plain water doesn’t get it sparkling.
I’m also looking at buying another tank as some of my residents will outgrow my current tank within the next year or so. If you know of someone who wants to let go of one, please let me know. It needs to be over 200 litres though…
Snails can keep it pretty clean. My dad used to have this thing in his tank that had a scrubby on one side for the inside of the tank and was magnetically attached to a handle on the outside of the glass. I have no idea what this nifty tool was called in English let alone Chinese.
I’ve thought about this, but I think my bigger fish would eat them. As for the “scrubby” thing, I’m gonna try explaining it to the fish shop in sign language … let’s see if it works.
when I was small, we had a big tank, and I think we got the fish out everytime and emptied the tank. Then filled the tank back up after it was cleaned. But there were snails too…
So is a plecaustamus. They’re a very common sucker fish that may look sort of prehistoric and ugly at first, but they’re great – relentlessly cleaning the glass and tehy don’t bother anyone and no one bothers them. Also, they’re tough fish and don’t die easily. Almost every fish store will have them.
But aside from that, you need to clean the inside of the tank regularly (maybe every few weeks, depending on how crowded it is and if you give them too much food which makes it dirtier). Buy a plain plastic scrubbie thing for cleaning dishes. Not a brush with a handle, but just the ball of looped up plastic that you hold in your hand. Of course it should have no soap in it. Clean it first in boiling water. Then use that only for hte fish tank and nothing else.
Scrub the inside glass before each water change. I assume you do a water change every few weeks. If not, you should. Drain out about a third of the water and replace it with tap water. If your tank is big enough and the gravel gets dirty, you should also buy one of those plastic siphons that they sell at fish stores for cleaning the gravel. Before doing the water change, use that siphon, rummaging it around through the gravel to pick up lots of shit.
Then, after you’ve siphoned the gravel, scrubbed the glass, changed the water, the fish will be very excited about all the stirred up shit and new O2 in the water. The water may be slightly cloudy for a half hour or so, but it will then settle down and be suuuuper clean and bright and the fish will be noticeably happier (and their colors will be brighter too).
After a while the routine gets to be sort of a hassle, but it’s really the right thing to do if you’ve got fish.
BTW, in case you weren’t aware, there are about a dozen fish stores clustered together on Minsheng E Rd, just before you cross over the bridge to Neihu.
I’ve found the scrape knife thing (which looks more like a razor at the end of a length of plastic) to be great. It gets rid of all the unwanted grime that those magnetic scrubber things sometimes miss.
Just use an old credit card or any similar plastic card. They work much better than the magnetic scraper, and get the job done quickly. You do get wet arms, though.
