CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

is it just me or is it really annoying how you can never get the gravel completely clean of fish poop. I recently did a large water change and vacumed the gravel as well as i could, moved decorations and such and vacumed until i wasn't picking up anything except water, then after adding a few buckets i notice poo and crap has been turned up by the buckets of water, after all my meticulous vacuming i still managed to miss some, i net as much of it out as i can but it's annoying because i thought i got rid of all that stuff. not to big a deal i know just wondering how many others are annoyed by this.

also my pl*co craps so fricken much, his stringy poop gets everywhere, prob going to cut him down to two algae wafers every night (need to put in at least two because my oscar likes to grab them)

Thats one reason why so many ppl will keep tanks with no gravel.
In my earlier days of fish keeping, we would "scoop" out the gravel, about every three months, and clean it in "bleach" and hot water. Shows what we knew. However, once it was out, you could syphon clean the bottom. It can still be done, just don't clean the gravel, just put it in buckets that have tank water in them. Clean the bottom, and then swish around the gravel in the buckets. This will remove most of the built up poop, but is a wet messy and time consuming procedure.

I had the same problem, especially the pl*cos, until Fuzzy reminded me "What Goes in Must Come Out".

Cut back on the food and you will cut back on the poop problem. I feed my fish every other day now and I don't have nearly as dirty a tank as I used to have.

Good Luck!