How To Sucessfully Clean A Fish Tank

Your first priority is to get everything ready in order for the cleaning process to be as quick and successful as possible. Materials you will need include:

-Towel
-Bucket
-Siphon
-Sponge
-Net
-Rubber Gloves

Your second item on the "To Do" list is to get your fish out of the tank before you start any cleaning. For this, you will want #5 from our materials list, a net. You will need to get a net for scooping them up depending on the size and type of your fish. If you have rather small, tropical fish you will probably be better off with a smaller net. If you have larger fish such as goldfish, you are more than likely going to get a bigger net. Easy right?

Now we can begin the whole process. With your bucket at hand, you should then take your siphon (a device used for taking water out of the tank) and place the hosed end in the bucket while the siphoned end is placed inside of the aquarium. Most siphons are very easy to use, and usually require you to move the siphon up and down repeatedly to get the water to flow through the hose. Once your bucket starts filling up with a reasonable amount of water, you can begin by collecting your fish slowly, but carefully and placing them into said bucket.

*It is important that you use the "old" water from the aquarium rather than filling the bucket up with tap water to hold your fish because of the temperature change. If they are placed in new water, the change in temperature could shock them and result in death.

Now that you have all of your fish in your bucket, you can stop siphoning for the time being.  Your job now is to place them into a "secondary" tank if you will.  It does not necessarily need to be a fish tank, but they need to be held in something until you finish cleaning the "primary" tank.

*NOTE: If you are simply doing a partial water change, there is no need to take out your fish!

Once that is completed, you and your bucket can now return to the dirty fish tank.  Your job now is continue siphoning until all of the water is out of the tank, or at least as much as possible.  The less water you have remaining in the tank, the better.  With the last bucket of water, I advise you to take all the plants that you have (if any) out of the tank and place them in the bucket of dirty water.  Assuming that you have decorations and such in your tank, you will want to take them out as well.  These may include rocks, caves, logs, driftwood, toys, air stones, ect.  You may introduce another smaller bucket for these things if you choose.  Also at this time, you should unplug and remove the hood/light and filter and place the filter in the bucket with all of the decorations.

So what do you do with the bucket(s) of plants, dirty water, and decorations?  The best thing to do is to place them in your kitchen sink for the time being.  Don't worry, we will get to those later.  Now that you have your bucket(s) back and empty, you can return to fish tank.  These are where the rubber gloves come in.  You may have already used them to take out the plants and decorations, that is totally fine.  I prefer to do that anyway.  With these rubber gloves, you can begin to scoop out the gravel that lays on the bottom of the aquarium.  The reason why I told you to get as much water out as possible by siphoning is so that dirty fish water doesn't go dripping all over the place when you take the gravel out.

It is practically impossible, and really unnecessary, to get every single piece of gravel out of your tank.  Just try to get at least 95% of it out.  With your bucket full of gravel, you can now haul it over to your kitchen.  It's probably not that heavy, depending on how big your tank is and how much gravel you have in your tank.  Me personally, I have a 30 gallon tank and there really isn't that much gravel to make me stress carrying the bucket!  Just keep your bucket to the side and return to the fish tank.  With your sponge!

Now that most of your aquarium is bare and empty, it's a great time to wipe down the glass! With a small bucket of warm water and your trusty sponge, you should begin to wipe down the glass and get any gunk that has been left behind such as food, poop, and/or algae.

*REMEMBER: Do not add or put any soap into your bucket of water for wiping down the tank. Soaps are really bad for your fish! Just use tap water only!

Once you have the glass as clean as possible, you can then take a hand towel or paper towels to wipe it down. This process is very quick and should not take up much time at all. Now that this is done, let's head for the kitchen!

*NOTE: Oh yeah, please don't use the sponge that you use for cleaning dishes.  That would NOT be good.

Here is where we separate the men from the boys, or the women from the girls. Now it is time to clean the plants and decorations. This will be the dirtiest part of the whole process, so be prepared to get dirty! Start off by putting on your rubber gloves and empty all of the aquarium's contents into the sink. With your hands and sponge, wipe down each item as well as you can and once they are done, place them on a laid out towel. Warm/hot water works best for this. The rocks, caves, and logs (if you have them) will be fairly easy to do and will only take a couple of minutes at most.

With the bigger things done and out of the way, move on to the plants. These will probably be the dirtiest things so far. Run them back and forth underneath the faucet to get as much of the "gunk" off as possible. It is easiest to take each individual plant piece apart and will make cleaning it much more successful. All in all, depending on how many plants you have, this should take you about ten minutes to do.

Next we have the filter. THE SINGLE MOST DIRTY THING IN THE TANK! If your squeamish, this part may not be for you. Just kidding, it's not that bad. If you're like me and have decent sized goldfish, that thing will be pretty gunky. But it's very easy to clean. Take out the filter cartridge and throw it in the trash if it can be replaced with a new one. Otherwise, clean it as best you can. If there are any other parts to your filter that can come out or apart, I suggest you do so and clean it thoroughly. With a good last rinse to the main part of the filter you should be good to go.

And last but not least, the last thing on our cleaning list is the gravel. With it still in the bucket, fill it up so that all the gravel is covered using warm water. Next, with gloves still on, use your hand to swivel the gravel around for about a minute. Empty it out and repeat. Keep doing this until the water comes out clear and there is no more debris coming out from the gravel. There you go, all your cleaning is done!

All there is left to do is to refill and replace.  What does that mean?  It's very simple.  Start off by putting the cleaned gravel back into your tank and spread it out to a manner that pleases you.  Once that is done you can add the plants and decorations.  With those in and ready to go, the filter should be replaced next.  If yours is the kind that has replacement filters, add your new cartridge and then place your filter back into the tank.  Now we can add the water.  This will take ten to twenty minutes depending on your tank size.  I would advise that when you are adding water to the tank, that you position the incoming water on a rock or a log.  This way, the incoming water does not disturb the gravel and send it flying everywhere (after all that hard work of placing it in there nicely).

Once the tank is full of water, it is now your job to place either drops or tablets to make the tap water safe for your fish.  If you have saltwater fish, you will obviously need to put your additives in to make it safe for your fishy friends.  HOORAY!  All there is left to do is put your fishies back into the tank and they are ready to swim in their clean home!

I hope you found this fish tank cleaning guide to be helpful and successful!  Please feel free to follow me or ask any questions that you may have!