Gravel Cleaners

[markandhisfish]

wonder if anybody couls help me i was reading about routikne tank maintinence yesterday and saw a bit about getting a gravel cleaner. and it got me thining that i sgould get 1, but as my filter is an under gravel filter 2 questions sprang to mind firsrtly does this not clean the gravel anyway and secondly would using the gravel cleaner damage my filter??

 

[iankent]

as far as I know, with an undergravel filter, the bacteria mostly lives in the gravel, so cleaning it would be an extremely bad idea - not sure though, as i've not used an undergravel, so will leave that to the experts!

as for sucking up the gravel, the gravel vac is used to disturb the gravel which makes the "crap" at the bottom float around and get sucked up. whereas a normal pipe would have a strong enough flow to suck up the gravel, the gravel vac doesnt because it has a much wider opening at the end, so the gravel just sinks to the bottom once you've stirred it up

 

[Anguilla82]

if your gravel is heavily gunked up with detritus and things then a small clean with a gravel cleaner aevery now and again would do no harm, however as has been said the 'crap' in your gravel is effectively your filter in an undergravel setup and so you don't want it clinically clean.

 

[markandhisfish]

as far as I know, with an undergravel filter, the bacteria mostly lives in the gravel, so cleaning it would be an extremely bad idea - not sure though, as i've not used an undergravel, so will leave that to the experts!

as for sucking up the gravel, the gravel vac is used to disturb the gravel which makes the "crap" at the bottom float around and get sucked up. whereas a normal pipe would have a strong enough flow to suck up the gravel, the gravel vac doesnt because it has a much wider opening at the end, so the gravel just sinks to the bottom once you've stirred it up

ok thanks yes that was what i was wondering ie if i have an undergravel filter and i used a gravel cleaner would i be doing more harm than good