I (of course ) disagree with vacuuming the substrate. I like all of the good bugs living down there. I also believe that if there is a need to clean it due to detritus, cyano or whatever then there is a need to add something to the cleanup crew. One exception may be if there is an excess of rubble, shells or something not "natural" on the substrate that you want gone. But generally a vacuum won't remove this.

My opinion is that it can do more harm than good.

I don't have mechanical filtration on my tanks, but if I did that would make a difference.  For instance if you have a sump area and a huge filter pad and tons of water flow, then I wouldn't vacuum the tank.  I would just stir it up every once in a while (I mean the water right on the top of the sand and rocks) and let all the crap get filtered out. 
If you have a 20 gal tank, then I say vacuum out 1 gal of water and dump in a new gal every couple months.

Adam

...and here I thought that they were supposed to look like crap.  Well, not the actual fish waste, but the different colorations that you get from the critters that live in your sand.  I've recently seen a couple of critters that I think are bristle worms in our substrate, and unfortunately a few flat worms.  So I know that our substrate is becoming more "lively," and from what I've heard that's good.  So if yours looks like crap, maybe that's a good thing. (??)

Renee

Weimers wrote: So if yours looks like crap, maybe that's a good thing. (??)

Completely agree.

Adam

Struhs,

My current tank is only about 8 months old, but it is definately a rainbow of colors in the sand.  You should also be able to look close and see little detritus particles and also tiny shrimp running around in the sand.

Adam

I am too lazy to read the above posts, so I will just give my thoughts.  Of course, I dissagree with most people on this topic.  Why is that different than any other topic?

I am 100% sold on gravel vaccing tanks.  I have seen tanks that have been set up for long periods of time and I will tell you that the detritus does NOT get eaten by "bugs".  Maybe some of it does, but tanks that do get vacced are by far cleaner than those that do not.  Obviously if a tank is not very populated with fish, then it would not have to be vacced as much a largely popluated tank.  Again, I don't care what all of you do to your tanks, but mine is getting gravel vacced.

There is a proper way to gravel vac a tank.  By that I mean only going down 1/3-1/2 of the substrate and only doing one side per cleaning.  That way your bacteria doesn't loose too much at once.  I am also a firm believer in refugias which is why I feel vaccing doesn't hurt my tanks as much as it might if I didn't have a refugia on it.

One more piece of info on this topic, wait until one of you has to move a tank that has never been gravel vacced.  You can watch all your fish die as the ammonia gets released into the water.

I like the idea of Shane's synthetic storm.  I have noticed that our cucumbers are never fully extended except when I am stiring up the substrate.

I have always heard and read that the bio load in our tanks is way off from the natural reef.  We have too many fish and other organisms to our ratio of water and seafloor.  Doesn't it make sense that we should compensate for this by vacuuming.  I think that if we had miles of sea floor with a nice current sweeping toward the near by drop off then we wouldn't need to vacuum.  But we have a load of fish and coral in a box.

If you are worried about loosing organisms, just vacuum into your refugium. 

Jake, I thought it was against club policy to agree with me.

Thanks buddy!

Ohh...  That's right.

Everything Marcus says is wrong.