hi my name is Ava also known as dorm room beta in this case today I'm going to teach you how to clean a ten gallon planted aquarium I've gotten some questions in the past about how to clean a planchette aquarium when your substrate is sand because that can be a little more tricky and some people aren't sure they want to use sand depending on how difficult it is to clean so I'm gonna clear up some issues on that today step one would be to get your supplies the most important thing I'd say that you might not have already would be a plain old length of tubing you can get this at pretty much any hardware store you can cut it to the length you want it it's pretty easy teaching convenient truth some people prefer using something like this buying a actual gravel bath this is pretty useful if you have gravels and you can sift through the Grabow much easier with sand I don't think this has any special benefits only just getting a cheap piece of tubing next to be have your scrubby brush whatever time you want to use whatever size works for you I use this mainly for a big cleaning when I just want to do some general areas do every side of the tank and get it done otherwise on most of my cleanings all have a designated toothbrush that all use just to touch up any areas where I see there might be some algae and get take care of those I'll also do kind of around the top where the water may have evaporated it usually leaves them plant bits and some water lines so I'll use a toothbrush for that next I designated dirty gallon jug is what I use you can use a bucket whatever you want your water to empty into I prefer a gallon jug because I save the dirty aquarium water and use it in my household plants because of the ammonia and other chemicals in the water are very beneficial for a lot of plants next designated clean jugs usually I'll fill these a day in advance leave them on coverage for 24 hours and the chlorine will evaporate out if you're more nerdy than that you can always dose with time to dechlorinate your water before it goes into the fish to make sure you follow the correct instructions on there so it's properly de chlorinated before it gets into your fish tank let's see cleaning your next step will be to actually start emptying out the water what I like to do is I take my dirty jug I put it in a bucket just in case I'm not paying attention and if this overflows it doesn't entirely ruin my floor so take this I set it on the ground just so it's lower then where you want your water to be coming from otherwise it's not going to drink take your tubing open your fish tank some people take their fish out for me it depends on how heavy a cleaning I'm going to do today I'm just going to take out some of the water not as much as I usually do so I'm just going to leave Ziggy in here stick one end of the tubing into the water take the other end of the tubing you can either get something that will suck out some of the air or you can do it like I do I've never had a problem with it put your lips to one end of the tubing start sucking the air out just sure you stop when you see the water start to get into the tube you don't want tank water in your mouth I'm sure it's happened to plenty people hasn't happened to me yet but put your finger over it then put that end into your gallon jug or bucket or whatever and you're doing it start sifting it around squirrel the end is how I do it I get tons of roots stuck in the tube so I let it go a little bit before I pull them out for me the biggest issue is snail poop they're nice and dirty creatures as fun as they are to watch but since they're visible I can just roll my mouse balls around actually they pick up all the yucky stuff from the bottom time I suck it out just be careful that you're watching your gallon jug so you don't overflow it on your floor if you take the end of the tube out of the water on accident you're going to have to empty out the tube so you can suck on the end again you're not going to be able to just put it back in and have it work so in that case just start taking all the water out and draining it into your job you will suck up some sand and that's okay it's not a big deal it's more just be careful not to suck up too much because you're just disturbing the look of your fish tank result so as you can see just sucking up the junk swirl it around you can see a lot of stuff gets picked up for me it's mainly the shampoo and plant bits and just continue doing that all over your tank when you're at the level you want or closer to the level you want of water gone that's when I usually scrub my tank so let's pretend I actually have more water out of here empty it up from the tube just by raising it up so it drains out take your brush and just start cleaning your tank you'll also notice at this point as you're moving the water around more like this that you see a lot more the junk in the bottom that you'll want to clean I like disturbing the water this way because then if I do plan on taking out more water I know what areas I need to focus on so your final step is going to be to pour some water back into the tank so what I usually do I take my clean water I find a place in the tank where it's not gonna disturb too much of the sand I pick over an ornament or over the driftwood for me it works very well because there's a specific high point in the driftwood where when I pour over that point it doesn't disturb the sand however works best for you maybe you just need to pour the water more slowly and you tank is clean and your fish is happy thank you so much for watching