Gravel Washing Using A Siphon....

[Ruthc1985]

Ok is there a knack to this? Whenever I use a siphon to gravel wash, my water always comes out way too fast with my gravl rising up through the siphon, meaning I do my water change whilst hardly having made a dent on washing the gravel....

Any tips or are there any good online guides?

 

[ninjacheesefish]

What brand of siphon do you have? You can get some which have gravel guards and are designed for certian sized tanks.

Also how far up it the tank from the floor?

 

[fluttermoth]

Keep a finger or thumb over the loose end of the tube so you can stop and start the flow. Takes a little bit of practise, but it's not hard

 

[Ruthc1985]

Ooo good thinking flutter! The siphon I have is a bio-orb one, the only one I could get hold of because it had a gravel guard (main reason I bought it). Tank is a couple of feet off the floor on a stand

 

[ninjacheesefish]

I'm assuming you don't have a biorb? The biorb siphons aren't designed for cleaning small gravel. The substrate in a biorb is basically rocks, which have massive gaps between them, so are heavier than gravel.
So it doesn't clean small gravel that well, as its too light so get sucked out easier.

Am I making any sense?

 

[BlueDragon]

When I was looking into gravel syphons I found out that you can get different sizes of syphon for different sizes of tank. So, for instance, I have a 'small' syphon. It's got quite a big hoover-bit on the end, but it sucks up the water at a nice slow speed so I have more than enough time to give the gravel a good going over in my twenty gallon tank. It also has a gravel guard, but it didn't say it did on the decription (I got it off Amazon), so it may be that lots of them do have gravel guards it's just that they don't say they do.

Have a look on Amazon, or somwhere else that's sells a selection of them, and you'll see what I mean. The same type of syphon tend to come in small, medium and large. And you might only need the small one for your tank : )

Also my syphon only cost me six quid and it still does the job fine.

Hope that makes sense?