Gravel Vacs

J

jon

Guest
Just curious on what everyone here thinks would be the best gravel vac for my situation. I will be living in a college dorm in the fall so I will not be able to use the faucet type vacs. I currently have the type you have to shake up and down to get the siphon going, but I'm worried that the axies I'll be getting will get a little freaked out by all that movement and shaking. I want to have a sand substrate as well since I've read about the axies eating the gravel, and sand seems to be more a part of their natural habitat. I was thinking about getting a really low powered shop vac (maybe around a 1 or 2 gallon). Something with a very small amount of suction. But I'm thinking that may still be too much and just make a mess of the sand. Any ideas are much appreciated. Thanks.
 
instead of shaking it you could give i nice hard suck on the end of tthe tube to get it flowing. That work if u dont want to disturb the water to much. Just be careful not to get a mouthfull of fishtank water :p
 
I dont use my gravel syphon in the Axy tank because the gravel is too large to be syphoned up & cleaned. I used larger gravel because people say that they eat the small stuff. Catch 22.
 
haha. Yea i was thinking about using large riverbed stone or something of the sort.. But I have tried that in fish tank setups before and it was very difficult to get it clean.. I've never tried sand before so I figure this may be the best time to try it. I think I may have to just suck on the end of the hose to get the suction going, which unfortunately I think someday I will get a mouthful of water
sick.gif
but it seems to be the only option so far.
 
Once you get good at it, you don't get water in the mouth any more.
 
With my siphon, all you have to do is fill the tube with water. As long as the container you are draining into is lower than the siphon, gravity will do the work for you. Living in a dorm myself, a small siphon and tube takes up very little space.

(Message edited by zeek333 on March 18, 2005)
 
Jon - I use sand in my axolotl tank. I do use a siphon that attaches to the sink but only when I am doing weekly water changes. To remove droppings I use a turkey baster. To do light clean up of the sand I use a battery operated vacuum from penn plax. This little vacuum has been extremely handy for me and you can use it to siphon water out of the tank or put a bag on and use it to vacuum up small debris from the tank (do not use the bag mode to siphon up droppings, it makes a HUGE mess out of the water because the droppings are sent through the impeller of the vac hence liquefying it).
 
nice, I think i may take a look at the battery operated ones. I have looked at those before but for a different setup, I think for this setup it should work nicely (minus the droppings part). For now I may just see how the vacuum I have now will work out, and if its more trouble than its worth I'll shoot for a battery operated one.
 
Hi - I don't have a syphon at all, is there another way of cleaning the gravel?
 
What i have started doing is i hook the hose from my gravel vac into my canister filter.... So the vac basically acts as the extractor of the water... I move it along normally vaccing up all the <font color="ff0000">&#149;</font><font color="ff0000">&#149;</font><font color="ff0000">&#149;</font><font color="ff0000">&#149;</font>, it goes into the filter and all the debris is caught and the clean water comes back into the tank.
 
the siphon us teh best way to clean all the gunk off the gravel and inbetween it. no other method that i know of works better or as good.
 
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