Best Sand/gravel Vacuum?

[Ryan_W]

Evening all,

Just wanting to pick your brains on what you view to be the best tank vacuum on the market?

My new 110L tank will be both sand and gravel substrate, so I need once which can clean both...

How does one go around cleaning sand? Do the vacuums come with some sort of mesh over the nozzle to prevant the sand from being sucked up?

Many thanks,

Ryan

 

[SimoUK]

A mesh on the nozzle?

How is fish poop going to fit through if sand cant?

And just use a regular gravel vac, thats what I use, I swirl the vac over the sand and it creates a mini whirlwind, which liftf the poop of the sand and sucks it up

 

[CrystalClear16]

I just use regular tubing and do the 'swirl' technique Simo described.

 

[Twinklecaz]

Ha ha no, you'll be putting it back in your tank a lot. There's no way to avoid sucking some sand up really. Put with sand you don't plunge the syphon into it like you do with gravel, you kinda swirl it in circular motions about an inch above.

I just use a plain tube these days with a kinda grid attachment on the end so I can't suck any fish up. Can't think of the brand but I got it from pets at home. I've tried 2 battery powered vacumes to clean my sand in between water changes and given up with both of them. 1 got jammed by sand in about 15 secs and the other doesn't seem to suck anything up atall.

 

[Katty]

The cheap store brand ones suit me fine (Petsmart if you're in the US). The one I have has a shaking start mechanism and its some tubing about as thick as your finger attached to a bigger hard plastic tube. I use the same siphon to clean my sand tank as my gravel tanks and I find the sand is a little bit easier to clean actually. You can just hover over the sand (takes some practice to figure how close you can get without sucking up sand) and it'll suck up any debris. If you start sucking up sand (or fish for that matter) you can pinch the hose and wait for it to fall back out before starting again. The swirl method works too if you have a lot of area to cover but some stuff can miss the hose and go floating around.

Oh and don't get an "extendable" gravel vacuum. Sand and small bits of gravel got stuck in the one I had and now it's stuck at one length. And if you can get a bucket clip those are very helpful.

 

[Ryan_W]

I'll have a look in my LFS tomorrow and see what they suggest...

I'm thikning the 'whirlpool' method will be the best bet. I'm not fussed about a little bit of sand getting sucked up.



On a side note, how much sand do you think I'll need to cover a 80 x 35cm tank floor with about 4cm of sand?

So 85 x 35 x 4 = 11,200cm3

Now I know mass and weight are differnt, but the thory for mass is as follows:

1cc = 1cm3 = 1g

So, 11,200cm3 = 11.2kg yes?

So I'll need at least 11.2kg to cover the bottom of my tank with 4cm?

It's been a long day and I'm not sure if my brain is working, so any help wouldn't go a miss. haha......

 

[Katty]

Lol I used a child's sandbox calculator (here). I had to convert stuff from imperial to metric and back but in any case it gave me 2.47202667101273 pounds, or 1.12129244 kilograms.

So yeah your calculation looks right. And of course err on the side of more rather than less.