how to clean gravel?

[JacopoFishy]

I looked over all the forum options, and I'm not quite sure where this topic belonged, so I guessed. I apologize if it needs to be moved.

anyway:
I'm ashamed of myself kind of, I feel like a beginner (as in a the-only-fish-I've-ever-cared-for-was-a-goldfish-when-I-was-seven beginner) ) . Just now I've posted maybe five different things because I'm clueless on the basics. I have a ten gallon community tank, and you can read the fishies who call it home in my signature. I desperately need someone to inform me on gravel care.
-how in the heck do you go about cleaning gravel?
-how often should it be cleaned?

 

[konrad05]

About once every 3-4 weeks, and you buy a gravel cleaner. It works as a siphon, so you can suck the water through the tube to start it or you can get what I had when I used buckets, which is a bulb that starts the suction for you. HTH

 

[Barday]

My gravel vac is a long solid plastic tube, about a foot long, you just plunge it up and down to get the suction started, and once it starts just put it into the gravel and it suck up all the filth!

Konrad your "bulb" sounds like a good idea, do you know what it is called so I can order one?

 

[pebbles]

using a turkey baster to start it off works too . just put the baster into the bucket end of the tube ,put the other end of the tube in the tank and squeeze the bulb on the baster a few times ... the suction starts , take the baster out and away you go ...

 

[freshmike]

Turkey baster is the -small tank/betta owners best friend-

Thanks Julie.

 

[konrad05]

using a turkey baster to start it off works too . just put the baster into the bucket end of the tube ,put the other end of the tube in the tank and squeeze the bulb on the baster a few times ... the suction starts , take the baster out and away you go ...

Only problem with that is that the turkey baster doesnt have a valve in it, so if you don't get the water going on the first pump than you're just pushing it back into the tank when you squeeze it. If anything, you can go to hardware store and buy a gas tank siphon