I am pretty excited that my gravel vaccing routine is now a success.
The first time I did some gravel vaccing on my 55 gallon aquarium I
just used a lee's gravel vac and 2 5 gallon buckets and scooped out the
babies from the buckets with a betta fluted bowl. Unfortunately this
method doesn't consider the fact that a lot of baby fancy guppies will
hide in the bottom of the bucket in the muck even with a 75
(approximately) watt light bulb right over the surface of the water in
the bucket. I emptied the bucket and lost one baby because of that. So
I revised my plan and will siphon with my original siphon, filtered by
a mechanical filtration media (just the spongy material), and siphon
the bucket water out until there is only 1/2 inch of water in the
bucket and then scoop all of the fish out. I do this after gravel
vaccing the tank. This method totally prevents baby loss so I am
jazzed. So far I have been able to gravel vac a lot of crud out of the
tanks so far, so it is important I keep this routine. Thanks for the
instructions here all, I only regret I didn't use my extra step or 2 in
the first place and saved that baby fancy guppy. Later!