Re: [APD] Planted Tank Debri

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

You can try removing the driftwood. Driftwood sometimes contributes a considerable amount of detritus. This usually happens in one of two ways. One, you have plecos that gnaw on the wood and pass much of the cellulose in their waste. Two, the wood is decaying quickly enough to show a build of detritus. 

As for critters to eat it; even if eaten, much (at least the cellulose portion) will pass through pretty much unprocessed, so to speak.

Otoh, if it is not cluttering the water column and you are occasionally vacuuming to limit the accumulation, then you probably don't need to worry about it, detritus in the substrate isn't usually a bad thing; some plants even prefer a nice rich substrate.
 
have plants, have fun,
sh 
 
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----- Original Message ----
From: Billy Reiter III <breiter3 at gmail_com>
To: aquatic-plants at actwin_com
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2007 10:22:18 PM
Subject: [APD] Planted Tank Debri


I have a 29 G. planted tank with 2 dwarf sunset platys and about 9 Cherry
Red Shrimp of various sizes. The tank has to decent sized pieces of drift
wood and is planted from front to back with various things.

The trouble I am having is with severe build-up of debri in my substrate.
The substrate is Eco-Complete that has been set-up for about a year. I
vacuum the gravel every couple of weeks and do 1/3 water changes. I've
experimented with moving the drift wood around to see if it causing a dead
zone as well as moving filter intake/outputs. 

With as few residents as I have in this tank I can't believe that it gets so
dirty. Any suggestions on what I can do to limit the debri, or any
additional critters I can add to either disturb or eat would be greatly
appreciated.
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