155 gallon tank established need to know bout substrate what to use

"Mark Henry" wrote in message
om...
Damaclese wrote:

all my water has to be brought up and down 2 flights of stairs so
common
suction gravell cleaners dont work.

Damaclese,

I had a similar problem as yours and got sick of lugging the buckets
down the stairs to the nearest sink. A eventually bought me a 100'
long
garden hose (about $15 USD) and tied it off to the tank stand and
threw
it out the window. The output hose from the gravel vacuum went into
the
garden hose, then I duct-taped the two together to prevent overflow.

During the summer I drain everything into the flower garden (awesome
fertilizer!), in the winter I run the hose down the stairs and into
the
bathtub (which then gets a good scrubbing).

To fill the tank, I went to a water bed store and bought a converter
for
the tap in my kitchen sink. It allows a hose to screw on to the tap so
you can fill a water bed. Now, it's two floors straight up, but I've
got
enough water pressure in the building to fill a 55gal tank in no
time -
and now I don't have to lug water up-and-down the stairs!

mark h


I bet his tank is downstairs and sink and faucet are upstairs.

"Damaclese" wrote in message
...
hiya this is my forst african tank its 155 gal. i stepped up from a 55
gal i
have about 40 africans aggression is ok and the sizes varry from 1 inch
to
about 5 inch i have a few places for the fish to run and hide but what
im
looking at is cleaning the tank.
all my water has to be brought up and down 2 flights of stairs so
common
suction gravell cleaners dont work. i suction into several 5 gal.
drums. i
was wondering what to use for a base i have medium gravell and pockets
of
sand in the bottom right now it is a planted tank and i was wondering
if i
could switch slowly to a full sand bottom with out much adverse effect
.. i
hear some people using crushed coral what is the purpose if any of
this? i
havealot of west coast granite (300 lbs) in varryingsizes i used this
for
definition in the tank and to anchor air stones and a huge val plant.
just a
little confuzzed about striking a balance between ease of cleaning
solid
waste and old food and fish happiness so if anyone can give me a lue
that
would be great. oh if it helps i run 2 fluval 404's for filtration
hopefuly u[pgrading to an ehiem soon but i dont have the 600$ to do it
right
yet

thanks

If your water supply is above the tank, then look for a basement floor
drain, or use a hose which outside reaches a point of lower grade, or use
a powerhead to pump the water up a few feet (ie: to some pail), to where
gravity feed is again possible. If you have a lower point outside, but
have to go up first, just fill the hose with water and seal both ends
before running the hose-end to the lower grade.

In theory, if you put a python faucet attachment (with its sucking
vortex) in-line with a hose from the 2nd floor (having the attachment at
the height of the tank or lower), it would generate enough suction to
pull your water up and out quite a distance. You might have to change
the hose used between the attachment and the tank as it would probably
collapse from the low pressure (use a standard heavy duty 5/8 garden hose
instead).

Like I said, "in theory", but I'm always rigging stuff like this. Most
recently I vacuumed all the gravel out of a tank using a 2" dia hose into
a large pail. A 2nd hose re-filled the tank with water. A 3rd hose
(python) drained the water out of the pail collecting gravel.

The use of crushed coral it to buffer and increase your gH and pH. It's
use depends on what your natural water conditions are, and what your
water parameter objectives are.

NetMax

You could build your own python. With enough amount of garden hose it
should work perfectly. Check out this site on how to build one from a
garden hose.

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/diy_python.php