# vacuming Eco Complete



## jonnyf84 (12 Jul 2009)

Hi all, i'm stripping my aquascape and starting again, it has been setup for 6 months, i have never cleaned the substrate (Carribsea EcoComplete) as my tank was 100% planted, however it is a bit of a mess so i tried to vacume it a little bit only to find that because it is so light that it just siphoned up the tube with all the muck, so how do i go about cleaning it? I would usually just leave it but my new aquascape will pretty much have a entire riccia carpet so there will be very few rooted plants to feed off the muck.


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## nickmcmechan (12 Jul 2009)

johnny, for ongoing maitnenance just use the gravel vac like you would for sand....maybe need to more (i.e. number per week) to vac the substrate more often??

if your ripping it all out and putting it back i've done this with eco complete in the past, simply pulled it all out and put it back - the algae on it dissappeared!


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## jonnyf84 (12 Jul 2009)

i'm taking it all out but it will need to be relatively dirt free because my next scape wont have many rooted plants so i don't want the current dirt to fester and pollute the water, the problem is that there is a lot of powder and fine stones in EcoComplete that are beneficial so i can't even siv it clean as i will lose a lot of the beneficial substrate.


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## aaronnorth (12 Jul 2009)

long job but cant you fill a bucket then wash it under the tap?


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## jonnyf84 (12 Jul 2009)

yeh i could do that but again i will lose a lot of the fine beneficial substrate. oh i dunno.........


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## gratts (12 Jul 2009)

I'd just reuse it exactly as it is.
Put it in the tank and fill it up. Anything that goes into the water column will be filtered out, and anything that stays in the substrate will stay in the substrate and not be a problem.


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