Super New Gravel Vac....

[Bex]

Just had to tell someone about our new gravel vac! This thing is great especially if, like us, you have a particularly messy fish - Royal plec = poop machine!

It has a barrel that sits on the side of the tank, with a little filter bag sock type thing, plug it into the mains and away it goes. It vacs up all the poop into this little bag and the clean water goes straight back into the tank.... so we can gravel vac without doing a water change!

It's brilliant! We have to vac our gravel every couple of days cos of our messy plecs so not having to do a water change everytime is great - and saves money on all the Stress Coat we were using!

What a marvellous invention. Everyone should have one!

 

[Sp00ky]

i found them to be a waste of time because when the water is sucked through the sock and blows a cloud of muck into the water.......

but thats my experience and im glad it works for you

 

[Bex]

only a little bit. it's no worse than the muck that gets stirred up anyway when you do a normal gravel vac and soon clears. And it's better than leaving all the poo in the gravel that our plecs leave daily - i'm talking a serious amount of poop here!

 

[Sp00ky]

only a little bit. it's no worse than the muck that gets stirred up anyway when you do a normal gravel vac and soon clears. And it's better than leaving all the poo in the gravel that our plecs leave daily - i'm talking a serious amount of poop here!

get it on the plants in the garden !! will do them the world of good LOL

 

[voo]

The ends are always too big on gravel cleaners

 

[Bloo]

i found them to be a waste of time because when the water is sucked through the sock and blows a cloud of muck into the water.......

but thats my experience and im glad it works for you

Not a fan of these things either. It just sucks up the poo and then churns it into fine particles - just to be pushed back through the mesh into the water (and the one I had even has a very fine mesh).

In my opinion - waste of money.

But if it works for you Bex, that's great

 

[Bex]

get it on the plants in the garden !! will do them the world of good LOL
[/quote]

LOL - if I had a garden I would!


"The ends are always too big on gravel cleaners"

Not if you've got a big tank! lots of poop needs big vac!

i found them to be a waste of time because when the water is sucked through the sock and blows a cloud of muck into the water.......

but thats my experience and im glad it works for you

Not a fan of these things either. It just sucks up the poo and then churns it into fine particles - just to be pushed back through the mesh into the water (and the one I had even has a very fine mesh).

In my opinion - waste of money.

But if it works for you Bex, that's great

Perhaps they've improved cos it really didn't churn out much at all? Mind you, what's works for one, doesn't necessarily work for everyone! The tank was clear again within the hour! And we vacced an awful lot of poop!

 

[falcodarkzz]

Awesome!
Im gonna get one

 

[Gill]

I Replace the Bags that come with those, With Ankle Tights.
This way the only thing that goes back into the tank is water. The Tights are tooo fine for dirt to go back into the tank.

 

[kimmers318]

What gravel vac did you buy? I have been looking at, and tried a couple of different ones to use on a sand bottom tank that is on the bottom of a tank stand. I don't get great suction with it being so low to the ground, but have found that I am not getting that great of suction out of the battery ones either.

 

[Bex]

Hi Kimmers

I'm not sure what make it is - at work at the mo but I'll PM you later if you want? It should work on your tank as it sits on the edge of the tank so the height of the tank shouldn't make any difference to the suction.

 

[kimmers318]

I would definetely appreciate the information....like I said, I tried a couple with little success and would be happy to invest in something that would make siphoning a low tank easier! Larger pieces of debris just don't want to siphon up into the hose when it is only draining into a bucket that is sitting on the floor right next to it! My only other option would be to run a hose out the door into the drain outside so that I can make the hose lower than the tank! Okay for now....but come winter might suck!

 

[Bex]

No worries, I will PM you when I get in.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Considering you should do a water change and substrate cleaning once a week, i don't see the point in doing just cleaning the gravel when you will still have to do a water change anyway.
If you don't do water changes often enough you can end up with extremely high nitrates or even worse, have a ph crash in the tank over time.

 

[Bex]

I know! Don't worry, still doing weekly water changes, it's just that our plec is REALLY messy and poops everywhere and we need to vac it up every couple of days. This thing saves doing a water change everytime we gravel vac and therefore saves on Stress Coat as well.

Now my tank is looking lovely and clean with a regular gravel vac to get all the brown woody poop and and a nice big water change weekly.

We couldn't leave the gravel vac to just once a week as the poop builds up really quickly and we couldn't vac enough up without doing really big water changes, like nearly 50%. On a 105 uk gal tank, it's a lot of water and a lot of stress coat!

*we've got a lot of bottom feeders and with this hot weather I don't like leaving all the poop for a week in case of bacteria build up that will harm them*