Gravel vacs and ghost shrimp

[Spesh1969]

Hello!

I have a 5 gallon with a betta, a few ghost shrimp and most recently (3) nerite snails to help with algae. Everyone seems happy, but man it seems like the snails poop a lot! It really stands out on the natural colored sand.

I have a gravel vac, but I'm afraid to use it for fear of sucking up the shrimp. I know I can put panty hose over the end, but then how would I actually suck up the poop?

Any tips or tricks?

 

[Rbishop]

Use a length of air line tubing....

 

[OrionGirl]

You watch as you gravel vac...it's pretty easy to not suck up something. If I'm just draining water I put a filter sock over and let it go unattended, but if I'm cleaning the substrate, I'm right there watching and target cleaning, so there's no worry of something accidentally getting sucked up...not to mention, the shrimp will avoid the siphon pretty easily.

 

[Spesh1969]

Thanks, all. I was worried because the shrimp are pretty hard to see. Plus, when I remove the top, all the light goes away (the tank is in a dark corner). I will find a way to keep the tank lit up while cleaning.

 

[FreshyFresh]

I've got a couple cheapy ~$3 squeeze bulb siphons from eBay that have screens over the suction that could help with this.

Or just gravel vac into a white bucket so you can better see what you siphoned out of the tank.

 

[fishorama]

I have used the mesh that onions are bagged it (or similar) to keep some critters out of the siphon flow. I haven't kept ghost shrimp but it helped with the much smaller cherry shrimp.