^^ the reason I got rid of my last tank

I chose not to put wood in at all - My tank is looking pretty clear now, but i decided to be safe and buy an upgraded filter/pump over the weekend, as the current one is right on the limit if not a bit too small for 200L.

i had the same problem with wood made it cloudy then bye bye fish, now i just use plastic ornaments and trees. dont want to risk it again

How often do you have to take all the fish out and clean the tank?

Would love to have a nice tank setup but the maintanence factor has always put me off!

They reckon once a week drain 1/3 to keep it pristine? Tie that in with good pH, filtration etc and you should be winning ..

Do you even need to take the fish out if you're not cleaning the entire thing?

In terms of cleaning the entire tank, once every 6 months, if that - depending on what kind of tank you intend on keeping and how many/messy your fish are. That's why you want to invest in the best filtration you can.

I never take the fish out.

Approx. 1/4 to 1/3 water change every 7-10 days using a gravel vacuum around the areas I can reach. Every 4 weeks depending on how dirty it's getting I take all the large rocks and stuff out and give it a good gravel vacuum then put everything back in. Fish just stay in the tank. I only clean the filter when it starts getting blocked up (6ish months) and even then just rinse it around in a bucket of tank water to keep the bacteria colony going.

All up, probably takes me 15mins most weeks and about 45mins-1 hour once a month. Piece of piss and a small investment in time to have something nice to look and sit infront of instead of the idiot box.

The driftwood you get from the fish stores is usually pretty good, the smaller goldwood type branches dont cloud up the water at all if you soak them for a while first and if you're going to have bottom feeders like bristlenose or plecos you need wood in the tank because they eat it to help them digest food. Bottom feeders are awesome and keeping algae down and keeping the bottom of the tank clean plus the plecos are awesome looking fish. I have 4 bristlenose catfish & 2 plecos in mine.

Edit: [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_tiFxJXbg"]Little video of one of the plecos[/URL]

Drift wood is the easiest. You simply then soak in fressh water until there is no salt left over.

The discolouration, water softening and lower Ph brought on by wood and filtering through peat is necessary for breeding of some species such as Discus.

Water changes don't have to be weekly - I found fortnightly totally acceptable. The aim of water changes is to dilute the final stage of bolgical filtering creating nitrates in the water. Effectively, water changes can be whenever the nitrates are elevated which is easily measurable with a test kit.

I'm running an aquaponics system so it's not for looks.
right now my pH is 7.4-7.6 which is slowing down growth of my veggies.
might grab some driftwood off the beach next time, bit of salt won't harm my fish (silver perch)

Any details or pics of the aquaponics set-up? Would love to set one up with some rainbow trout and/or marron and some fruit and veg.