Gravel And Sand Cleaning

[reaper]

Hi all

still fairly new to the topic when i first posted on here getting a bit better now. well ive ended up with two tanks now

anyway getting to the point, ive just came back from two weeks of holiday i cleaned the tanks out before i left as i usually do every second week

when i got home the main tank was green. and my other smaller tank looked clear. i set around cleaning the green algae off with a magnet then done my usual cleaning today. (including filters)

big tank cleaned up nicely as it doesnt really build up much think my sister over fed them

but my smaller tank it looked nice and clean but as soon as i started removing bog wood the tank started turning dark. i managed to get some of the gunk out but in a rush i quickly filled up the water to get the filter back up to try suck most of it in. however ive noticed that there is probally a fair amount lying on the bottom. also ive returned home to find ive now got a snail problem which i will cure later on as my other tank has clowns and balas which love snails


anyway.

ive got a syphon thingy but its not that good acutually its pretty poor so is there anything really good for cleaning up bottoms of tanks .

the small tank has gravel bottom and my main tank has sand so something ideally that could do both.

filters (main tank has two, the standard jewel filter and a fluval 2 this is because the jewel filter pushed all the waste to the other side of the tank so my cure was to add a second on the opposite side as this works a treat)

the small tank has a eheim filter

all filters are internal

thanks in advance

 

[waterdrop]

Hi and welcome to our beginners section!

Sounds like you've already about answered your own question! You just need to outfit your gravel-cleaning-siphon situation better and start cleaning a lot more. For your sand substrate I recommend simply getting a length of plain flexible tubing that you can lock your thumb over on the end. What you do is of course get the siphon going into a large bucket or out the window to a garden and right after it gets going, stop it with your thumb. Put this hand down a few inches from the sand surface and let your thumb off to test the vacuum pull. Don't worry, some sand will go out but its cheap. The skill is to position the suction at just the right height as you move around so that you suck up debris but not much sand. You can wave your other fingers to stir up the debris a little and then release your thumb and vacuum it up.

For your gravel substrate you just need a better version of the type of gravel siphon you already had. You can get different sizes of large clear cylinders and you don't want it so big that its hard to handle in your size tank. Just stare at the ones in the store and think about it (perhaps the packaging will have a suggestion you can think about) and I'm sure you'll make a good choice. With these, once the siphon gets going, you want to gently work the cylinder into the gravel for deep cleaning. The suction will churn the gravel and it will drop back down but some of the debris will float out with the water that's going out. At all times be very careful of your fish, they can get hurt by the edge of a gravel cleaning cylinder! And of course keep it mostly down in the gravel so the frisky ones don't get sucked out!

Gravel clean water changes need to be done weekly. This is generally more often than you need to squeeze out your filter media, often that only needs to be done monthly or perhaps every other week. (Always clean filter media in tank water so as not to damage your beneficial bacteria with chlorine/chloramine that's in tap water.)

All of this assumes you are using buckets. That is probably what you'll choose to continue doing but be aware that there are products out there (Python is one brand or there is a DIY Python article some where on TFF) that can be put together to help with both the out-siphoning and then be used to directly fill the tank from a faucet that is somewhere else in the house.

~~waterdrop~~