The Art of the Gravel Vacuum

Yes, it is a required part of maintenance for most setups. If you are running a reverse flow UGF, where the water pushes up through the gravel, it's not needed as often, but the problem of solid wastes will exist for all tanks, and very few filters will successfully remove all of them. I have a 5 at work with 4 cherry barbs in it, and it still needs cleaning. I have sand in the tank, so the wastes don't get deeply in the substrate, but they still need to be removed. If these wastes are not removed, they will break down, adding to the ammonia/nitrite levels in the tank--sure, the bacteria colonies can grow to accomodate this if there's suitable media, but it's much better to get them out of the system entirely.

If you kinda make a slope from the back downwards you can get most of the waste at the front which can help in cleaning. You can also make the substrate slope from one side to the other so the filter can pick it up better.

I have a five gallon tank, and it still needs to have the gravel cleaned. It's a part of typical tank maintenance. If your larger gravel vac is too big, you could always pick up a cheap smaller one for probably $10 or less.

I have heard of people using a simple turkey baster for cleaning, but I think that becomes quite cumbersome on aquariums larger than two gallons. Though, they're great for quick clean ups between regular gravel cleanings.

I used a turkey baster for my 3-gallon eclipse, to suck the gunk up off the gravel, and then dumped out 1/3 of the water... but yes, imo and ime, you should vacuum the gravel every so often!

an exception would be planted tanks. in my 55, I have highly washed medium sized gravel, not an ideal plant substrate. I never vacuum my gravel, except for lightly going over the surface, not digging it up or anything. the wastes that get farther into the substrate just help the plants, esp. those with big root systems like crypts and swords.

I have never been a fan of vaccuming, persay pushing the gravel vac down into the gravel and sucking everything out. I think passing over the top of the gravel and removing whats on top is a much better idea, I started doing this at the LFS I Work at, where previously a very vigorous gravel vaccuming was done every week, and the fish started looking and surviving better. My reasoning may be flawed, but it seems to have worked. I feel that if your stirring up the gravel like that, and sucking all that cloudy stuff out of the gravel, your also removing a very large portion of your biological filter. A reduction in that size as I suspect may happen would allow an ammonia spike and then in return harm the fish. I use sand in my tanks so I simply just go over the top and get whats there, its usually not much if any, so why doesn't the same work for gravel? It seems that my theory has worked at the fish store, the tanks look better, the fish look better, and water parameters have stablized, and the tanks have stayed cycled. Maybe I am all wet, but it seems to be something to me.

I have three tanks and three gravel vacuums! Never had a problem.

Bacteria adhere to surfaces very well--short of chemical treatments or scrubbing it, you're not going to remove them from th gravel, and outside of UGF/RUGF setups, most of the bacteria are in the filter media, not the gravel.

If, however, you end up just burying the wastes instead of removing them, you can compound the problem.

You could construct your own gravel vac out of some clear plastic pipe and tubing. I have done this using 1/4" tubing for my fry tanks so I could control it better and not suck the little guys out while cleaning the bottom (bare with no gravel).

For what you want I'd suggest using larger pipe though, maybe 1" would be big enough.