battery Vacuums.... Do they really work?

[jeffrey]

I see these battery powered vacuums at the LFS all the time, and well it would make things way easy like spot cleaning after feeding and well jsut cleaning it up.

I have found that the water vacuum thing that I use for water changes isnt the most effective at cleaning the sand all the time.

So do they really work? and what one is the best?

 

[guppymonkey]

I don't really see how they can work all that much better then a simple gravel vacuum syphon. Sometimes they have a higher flow rate but they don't seem to be cleaning any better, especially if the substrate is sand. A lot of syphons have problems with sand because it is so light compared to gravel.

 

[jeffrey]

I do have a problem with my sand, so get some of the stuff I end up sucking up 5lbs of sand too.
I have lost enough over the last few months that I think I need some more again.

 

[Arashi]

I bought one of the little battery vacuums. I was interested to see if they actually worked, mainly because I have a lot of very messy fish (Plecs and Livebearers), and I knew that the once a week cleaning just wasn't going to cut it...I needed something to help me clean throughout the week. So I bought one. It's not the most powerful thing ever made, and it's actually a bit weaker than my siphon. But it does do what it's intended to do, and that makes me and my fish happy, and makes my tanks cleaner. I don't have sand in any of my tanks, but I could guess that it would work fairly well with it, as sand is much finer than gravel.

:::EDIT::: I forgot to add that cleanup sorta sucks. Those little bags can get really messy sometimes, and touching all that fish debris is a little icky.

 

[Scales]

I bought a battery vac, and to be honest I wouldn't look back. They are pretty powerful and quick, with mine you can attach a pipe to pump to a bucket, or put the little bag on and it recirculates the water back into the tank. I have sand as my substrate, you just have to hold it about 1 inch away and up comes the pooh with very little, if any sand taken with it.

 

[kev_kb]

I'll second everything that has been said in favour of battery syphons, I had a manual one before and it was awkward to get the syphon started. The one I have has an attachment for cleaning gravel which works great and then I take that off to clean my tank with sand. I'm left with a small circular pipe and that sucks the debri from the sand really well, you just hover it around an inch or over the sand and it doesn't take any sand up unless you want it to.

One thing I would say though is check to see how fish safe yours is if you buy one. I managed to suck up an Oto with mine and he got sucked right up into the syphon in a chamber with the battery operated propeller. He lost a lot of his tail and eventually died. So now I just put a piece of old fish net over the end of the pipe so fish don't get sucked up...

 

[smithrc]

as others have said - we use ours for tidy up...

they CANNOT replace water changes - they just return the water to the tank.

We use a python every 2-3 weeks for water changes and our battery vac for tidying up our sand tanks 2-3 times a week.

 

[Undawada]

Hm, this thread inspired me to check my LFS for one.

I have a quarantine / hospital tank that I rarely use but its a real pain because its on the floor: no way to drain it or do water changes with a siphon.