questions about vacuuming gravel....

[coolchinchilla]

Questions about vacuuming the gravel in a tank:

1. How often do you do it?

2. Do you take out the decorations in order to get at the gravel?

3. I always feel rushed when I'm changing water and vacuuming the
tank. What kind of gravel cleaner do you use? How well do you get
the gravel cleaned?

4. Are there special considerations for gravel cleaning with a UGF?
e.g. not exposing the UGF grate while cleaning?

Thanks!
coolchinchilla

[Ionizer]

"coolchinchilla" > wrote in message
...
> Questions about vacuuming the gravel in a tank:
>
> 1. How often do you do it?
>
> 2. Do you take out the decorations in order to get at the gravel?
>
> 3. I always feel rushed when I'm changing water and vacuuming the
> tank. What kind of gravel cleaner do you use? How well do you get the
> gravel cleaned?
>
> 4. Are there special considerations for gravel cleaning with a UGF?
> e.g. not exposing the UGF grate while cleaning?

Well, I'm glad to see that you're not asking questions about freeware in
this group ;) (BTW, you did get a couple of helpful responses over in
acf.)

Recently, I've been vacuuming with the weekly 10% water changes using
one of these:
http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=HG11063

The time it takes to remove about 10% of the water doesn't allow me to
vacuum more than a small area of the gravel, so it's taken me over a
month to work my way across the bottom of our 25-gal tank. Once I've
established a siphon, I pinch the hose and shove the end of the vacuum
deep into the gravel. Then I vacuum until the water comes up fairly
clear, then pinch the hose and move the vacuum to a new spot. I've never
removed any of the decorations.

I hope I'm doing it right.

Regards,
Ian.

[Dick]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 00:37:38 -0500, coolchinchilla
> wrote:

>Questions about vacuuming the gravel in a tank:
>
>1. How often do you do it?
>
>2. Do you take out the decorations in order to get at the gravel?
>
>3. I always feel rushed when I'm changing water and vacuuming the
>tank. What kind of gravel cleaner do you use? How well do you get
>the gravel cleaned?
>
>4. Are there special considerations for gravel cleaning with a UGF?
> e.g. not exposing the UGF grate while cleaning?
>
>Thanks!
>coolchinchilla

I never vacuum the gravel, just change 20% of the water twice weekly
and clean the filter media when the water flow through them gets too
slow.

dick

[Nikki Casali]

Ionizer wrote:
> "coolchinchilla" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>Questions about vacuuming the gravel in a tank:
>>
>>1. How often do you do it?
>>
>>2. Do you take out the decorations in order to get at the gravel?
>>
>>3. I always feel rushed when I'm changing water and vacuuming the
>>tank. What kind of gravel cleaner do you use? How well do you get the
>>gravel cleaned?
>>
>>4. Are there special considerations for gravel cleaning with a UGF?
>>e.g. not exposing the UGF grate while cleaning?
>
>
> Well, I'm glad to see that you're not asking questions about freeware in
> this group ;) (BTW, you did get a couple of helpful responses over in
> acf.)
>
> Recently, I've been vacuuming with the weekly 10% water changes using
> one of these:
> http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=HG11063
>
> The time it takes to remove about 10% of the water doesn't allow me to
> vacuum more than a small area of the gravel, so it's taken me over a
> month to work my way across the bottom of our 25-gal tank. Once I've
> established a siphon, I pinch the hose and shove the end of the vacuum
> deep into the gravel. Then I vacuum until the water comes up fairly
> clear, then pinch the hose and move the vacuum to a new spot. I've never
> removed any of the decorations.
>
> I hope I'm doing it right.

Your vacuum method sounds right. I used to use the gravel cleaner in
your link, but have changed back to my old one that uses a wider
diameter hose. You want the greatest flow without any restrictions to
pull up the dirt. Your cleaner has a bottle neck to prevent larger items
being accidentally siphoned and it also has some sort of valve to jump
start the siphon process. I found that it just didn't have the sucking
power to lift the heavier detritus matter and had to waste water waiting
for the dirt to slowly levitate to the top of the tube.

Nikki