Gravel Cleaning

[tez2k007]

Going to do this when get in from work and you can shoot me for asking a daft question but how exactly does it work. AS if it creates a vacum will it suck up my gravel also. Not sure how it works.

 

[Keithbaxter]

The strength of water will not be strong enough to carry teh gravel all the way up the resistance isnt strong enough. Just run the hoover over the gravel disturbing the top few rocks and itll suck up the excess food and poop laying just below the surface. if you find the gravel starts going up the tube just put your finger over the end in the bucket the gravel will just fall back into the tank and when you move your finger itll keep going.

When you finish remove the hoover from the water not the other way round as youll get a wet floor like my misses did first time she tried "helping".

Once a month i do a deep gravel clean where i push the hoover deep into the gravel one bit at a time, push the tube deel into the gravel let it go up the tueb then lift the tube the gravel fall back into the small hole but the poo and food etc keep getting sucked up, i do this just before a water change and suck up the extra floaty bits with the hoover after.

 

[raptorrex]

Going to do this when get in from work and you can shoot me for asking a daft question but how exactly does it work. AS if it creates a vacum will it suck up my gravel also. Not sure how it works.

if you think of it as a long syphon with a wide tube on the end, does that help? there are some "electric and air driven units, but many of us just use the syphon type. you pop the wide end of the pipe in the water and suck on the narrow end. whilst the water is being removed you can disturb the substrate with the end of the syphon and the dirt is drawn away with only the smallest bits of gravel being picked up.

the electric and air driven units do much the same, but they do not remove water, they catch the dirt in a bag.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree, the gravel just churns around in the first inch or so of the clear tube and falls back down as you lift the tube, while the debris trapped amongst the gravel is then stirred up and floats upward with the slow movement of water out of the tank via the siphon hose. You will observe that not all the stirred-up debris gets taken out of the tank by any means.. that's ok because you have to think of it as just an ongoing thing, a partial cleaning that happens each week.

This weekly maintenance process is accomplishing a lot of things. It is keeping the debris in the gravel from collecting in amounts that would eventually be in danger of fueling a sudden bacterial bloom of the heterotrophic bacteria, with subsequent ammonia spikes. It is removing the nitrate(NO3) which is the endpoint product of the biofilter and is the "canary in a coalmine" for the other pollutants. It is removing untold trace metals and organics that we don't have the time or money to test for but which could be bad for the tank if left to build up over many months/years. It is removing water with whatever carbonate level the tank now has and replacing it with whatever carbonate hardness level the new source (usually, tap) water has. This is often the way that essential calcium nutrients get supplied for plants, bacteria and fish, all three of which need calcium, magnesium etc. in reasonable levels. Finally, just for fun, it is my own opinion that its supplying water movement, temperature change and general fun for a bunch of fish that would probably get a lot more of that out in their natural habitat!

~~waterdrop~~