# mulm or not?



## leap (19 Aug 2015)

Hi

I am a relative newbie when it comes to aquascaping so please forgive me if my question sounds really stupid.

My 24L tank is heavily planted with lot's of wood & some pebbles - 6 mnths old. Running on Eheim canister filter and a sponge filter internally. It's a temporary home for a betta, 1 amano and 2 nerite snails at the moment.

 I have a lot of mulm build up & snail poo under the wood and at the back of it.  Recently I have seen quite a few planaria in the tank - some of which I have trapped. I think the Betta is also on the hunt as numbers are diminishing, but still - does it mean I have a filthy tank....?

I'm a tad confused, as some say planaria is due to detritus in dirty badly maintained tanks.  From what I understand on the other hand Walstead says mulm is good stuff for the tanks biology.

  I have been vacumning the front of the tank and what little I can access at the back,  but don't know whether to lift all the wood regularly & vac it up or not?

Do you manage your mulm or do you leave it be?


----------



## EnderUK (19 Aug 2015)

When it gets bad I have it up in my low tech. My high tech has very little of it. You can use a air hose or co2 line to slowly suck it up in the hard to reach places. It's really up to you when you decide enough is enough


----------



## Edvet (20 Aug 2015)

In a low tech i don't mind mulm,I remove it when it becomes to much,  in a high tech it doesn't belong.  If you have fry it is beneficial.


----------



## leap (20 Aug 2015)

Thanks for your answers - helps me get my head around what is increasingly becoming the most impossible hobby I have ever gotten myself into!

When I started my tanks I set up a few little one's on the side (12L). 

Two of them I do all the whole palava with, ferts/w/c etc but one of them I left alone. 

Plan was to experiment with what happens if one plants up a tank, puts a poret filter into an internal filter and does boogerall! Ok, I top it up but otherwise it is left alone. I've never water changed, given ferts, rinsed the filter or vacuumed it. It has a pathetic circulation rate.
It houses an explosion of baby ramshorns and a very fat nerite snail and that's all.

I'm not going to say it is pretty - it has about a cm of pale brown, very dusty type, mulm on the substrate and it's a bit wild/overgrown.  But the water is crystal clear. The plants look in the best health in this tank. Some have a little old black-brown diatom growth from a few weeks after initial set up on old leaves, but that subsided and the growth of the plants is streets ahead of of the rest of the tanks. When I think of the hours I spend fussing over the other tank/s, I have to wonder.... 

Think I will try to dig some of the mulm into the substrate and give it a trim and tidy up this weekend - but still won't waterchange etc. I'm keen to see where it goes in another 6months time.

The two other tanks next to it look dreadful  - they do have different filters but substrate etc is the same. The plants in the ones I w/c etc - are a diatomed, yellowing plant mass - a  sorry sight. *sigh* They also only have snails in them. One has a young amano in it but I think I will move him to a larger tank soon.

Technically the bettas tank is high tech, as I use excel daily in it. I work hard on this tank (maybe too hard!) but I dunno. The diatoms have never ceased, the anubias are smothered by the stuff,  the mulm builds up at a rate of knots and aside from a healthy boy in it, I wonder if I'll ever get it right!


----------

