Battery powered gravel vacs

Daveunkefer

Daveunkefer

AC Members
Mar 12, 2013
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Murrells Inlet SC
Real Name
Dave Unkefer
Anyone ever use one? Instead of the gravity based water siphon type. Sometimes in my small tanks it just seems like I just don't have enough time to vac it all before I take my 25-30% water out. Also if the tank is very low, there isn't much suction and it barely picks up anything.


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When you are vacuuming, and you are finished with one spot and moving to another spot, you need to kink the tubing so it's not sucking water while you are moving to a new spot, then once the vacuum is in the gravel in the new unvaccuumed spot, let go of the kink. I can vacuum my entire 120 gallon tank with (just barely) less than 5 gallons of water doing it this way.
 
Some people hook a siphon to their filter intake. It's not as convenient, but it's cheaper
 
Forgive me for jumping in here trying to get off topic....

If the conditions in your tank are suitable for plants and fish, then there is no need to vacuum your substrate, ever.

I have a 38G with just gravel as substrate thats been running since 2004. I have not touched the substrate in three years since I planted it and populated it with malaysian trumpet snails.

Mulm is plant food after the snails had a say about it.

Oh, and this motley crew helps out a bunch too...

image.jpg

image.jpg
 
The tanks I'm vacuuming are barebottom 20G long pleco breeders. So every couple days there is massive amounts of **** to vacuum. Doesn't really bother me other than the tank that I use RO/DI.

I was thinking maybe it would be a good investment to get a battery powered vac so I'm not going through so much RO.


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Bare bottom breeder tank, RO water, they are good reasons to buy one of the gravel vacuums. So i was curious about them, ended up finding this eheim demo on youtube showing off the vacuum on a bare bottom tank.

http://youtu.be/glHzVEQpnM0
 
dhvService said:
Bare bottom breeder tank, RO water, they are good reasons to buy one of the gravel vacuums. So i was curious about them, ended up finding this eheim demo on youtube showing off the vacuum on a bare bottom tank.

http://youtu.be/glHzVEQpnM0
Click to expand...


looks like it works like a champion. now to sell off a couple fish to come up with the extra cash.
 
dhvService said:
Forgive me for jumping in here trying to get off topic....

If the conditions in your tank are suitable for plants and fish, then there is no need to vacuum your substrate, ever.

I have a 38G with just gravel as substrate thats been running since 2004. I have not touched the substrate in three years since I planted it and populated it with malaysian trumpet snails.

Mulm is plant food after the snails had a say about it.

Oh, and this motley crew helps out a bunch too...

View attachment 208674
Click to expand...
Even with your cleanup crew they still produce waste. Sure your plants can use up some of their waste but they can't utilize all waste. Just because the fish are surviving doesn't mean the water is clean. I think you would be surprised of all of the waste in your gravel if you siphoned some of it.
 
leshrimp said:
Even with your cleanup crew they still produce waste. Sure your plants can use up some of their waste but they can't utilize all waste. Just because the fish are surviving doesn't mean the water is clean. I think you would be surprised of all of the waste in your gravel if you siphoned some of it.
Click to expand...

Not surprised at all, I am hoping there is two or more inches of that grunge down there under the gravel. And the deeper it is, the more anerobic I believe the bacteria will be. Ah, but you say anaerobic bacteria is bad... Fear not what you don't understand, this substrate is performing like a deep sand bed. The tank will be nine years old in October. There are half dozen cory fry in the tank as we speak.

If you would like to discuss this in depth, let me know and I will start a new thread for this topic.
 
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