Cleaning Your Tank

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GriffinC18

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Hey everyone, I have kept fish for several years now and have always cleaned my tanks by hand. I would do water changes regularly and then about two times a month, i would clean the rocks and get all the nasties that were in bottom of the tank out (crap). I recently tried to convert my sub to sand for my algae eater, but i am now back to rocks....there was an incident with the sand before i even put the lil guy in the tank, and now I'm back to gravel/rock. I have always heard of a vacuum and wondered if this works better than what I'm doing and is easier?
 
Thanks
 
Gravel vacuums are an excellent invention. They can be used with sand too. Basically they make life easier because they remove water while cleaning your substrate. In tanks with sand or very fine gravel, one needs simply to swish the end of the vacuum over the substrate to lift up the detritus. The vacuum then carries the detritus out your window (as in my case), into your buckets, or straight to your sink. There are expensive ones like pythons which connect to your sink making water changes a breeze. There are cheap ones like seven foot flexible PVC or whatever tubes which are best suited for sand. And there are the 12-25 dollar ones which might even start the suction themselves. These are great for gravel and sand and bare bottoms. I have one of these and a tube.

When I first got into tanks I would use cups and scoop the water out and dump it and then refill with the cups, but this is much cleaner, and it makes sure that my bottom feeders don't get a mouthful of poo while they scavenge.
 
Thanks for the reply! i was thinking about getting one and using it in my guppy tank, then getting a bare bottom goldfish tank and also use it for that.
 
It is good to have one for each tank in case one tanks gets sick. This way prevents infection in other tanks.
 
I've been using a gravel vac on my tank for years now, I love it.
 

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