when cleaning my salt water fish tank is there time where i can take everyitng out and clean it??

Answer 1

NEVER

This will cause you to have to cycle your tank all over again. A glass scraper bought in a paint department for next to nothing will remove everything growing on the glass without scratching it. A turkey baster will 'blow' all the slime off your rocks and sand. and snails will help keep everything else clean.

Answer 2

You don't want to do that. You ruin everything your tank has started. It needs all that to completely cycle. For the first 4-5 months I was taking all the ornaments out every other week cuz they had brown stuff on it. Boy was that ever a job. Then I would scrub them all in hot water. Siphon about 10 gal out of my 46 gal salt water tank then add new. I never took the fish out or completely tore it down. If the tank gets to where you can't see in it properly, buy a magnet cleaner. Half of it goes in the tank, the other half goes on the outside. All you do is slowly drag it around the glass and it cleans the inside. Once I left my ornaments alone and just cleaned the front glass the brown algae got really bad for a few weeks then completely reversed itself. That's when you know it's cycled. But make sure you do water changes and the water and salt level are the same as what's in the tank.

Answer 3

You shouldn't need to take everything out & clean the tank, unless something really bad happened, ie., disease or extreme filthiness. If you really feel you need to tear it down, be sure to siphon a fair amount of clean water from the top, put it in at least two or three pails/containers, and keep the fish separated as much as possible. The likelihood that they will stress out & perhaps become aggressive towards smaller tankmates is high. If you need to, swish any decorations in clean tank water - if not possible, use room temperature water. Keep in mind you will likely kill off any corals/inverts when doing this. Sand/gravel can also be rinsed in tank water or room temp (preferable salt) water. I've had some tanks for 10+ years without ever tearing them down to clean. If your tank is properly set-up & balanced ecologically, you will need to clean very infrequently - I had a 75g freshwater I cleaned every 6 months, and I've had marine semi-reefs I would clean every 4 months. Best of luck - sorry for the gigantic post :)

Answer 4

You take everything out FIRST, and put the fish into containers with the dirty water, so they'll live while you clean.then, put them into ziplocs (with some of the clean water in the ziploc with them) and put the ziplocs into the water, so the fish can get used to the temperature. Hope this helps.

Answer 5

HMM, if you really want to kill off your really expensive investment then yes. To my knowledge, live rock and sand need to be kept wet, andtaking out expensive and delicate fish out into small containers, then dumping them into a tank of completely new water chemistry is never a smart idea.