Penn Plax Super Battery Vac

[cynthia]

My Battery Operated Gravel Vacuum Review.

I purchased the Penn Plax Super Battery Vac to lightly hoover my sand for debris because my sypon/gravel vac that attaches to my sink was sucking up all my sand.

This vacuum comes with a bag so you do not have to remove water to while vacuuming. The vacuum does come with a hose adapter so you can add 1/2" hose and remove water while vacuuming if you should desire.

I tested using the bag. I just wanted to remove plant debris. The directions suggest lining the bag with some loosely packed filter floss to aid in collecting dirt.

As long as I held the vacuum end above the sand and did not disturb the sand, it worked great for picking up pieces of plant and small floating bits. The vacuum will suck up sand if pushed into the sand.

Do not suck up axolotl poo while using the bag. If you do it just liquifies the poo through the bag and back into the water. I made a quite a mess.

Over all the vacuum does want I wanted it to do. The vacuum needs opened up and cleaned after each use. The debris passes directly through the impeller and can get caught there. Cleaning is easy as it comes apart at the impeller.

When it comes to light sand substrate, the faithful turkey baster works best for picking up poo.

 

[jennifer]

I have one of these too. I bought it hoping that I could use it to suck the water out of floor-level tubs, where a regular siphon doesn't work. I use it with reasonable success to get the mulm out of my Daphnia tubs. I don't use the bag attachment (which, I agree, just lets the crud flow through), I use a piece of tubing to send the outflow to a bucket.

The main drawbacks for me are (1) it does not work in shallow water, (2) the attachment on the bottom has a fixed angle, and I would like to be able to maneuver it at other angles (hard to explain), and (3) it appears that it could easily suck up small animals. Because of these problems, I found it to be rather useless for my newt tanks.

 

[jon]

I know this post is a little old. But i was wondering how shallow the water was when you tried to use this vacuum. I need something because my tanks becomes a mess with pieces of plants and stuff all over the place and I don't want to change the water this often. I usually do my water changes weekly, I just need this to clean up a little between water changes. Basically I have about 4 inches deep of water and need to know if this will work, or if this is too shallow. Thanks!

 

[jennifer]

The water has to be at least 8 inches for this gadget to work at all, and deeper water would work better. For small clean-ups, have you tried a turkey baster?

 

[cynthia]

Yes, the water has to be fairly deep for it to work.

I am using it in a 40 gallon aquarium that is full to the top, so water depth is not a problem for me.

Now that I have had this vacuum for a while, I have to say I am still very happy with it.

I have removed the wide head vacuum attachment and just use the 1/2" tube. I always line the bag with filter floss.