cheeky_chappie
Fish Fanatic
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2005
- Messages
- 105
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hi guys
have had my rio 180 set up for a few weeks now. have ordinary small pebble gravel in the bottom (about 2" or so deep.) tank has a few artifical plants, a small rock formation and a white chinese pebble display as well. still plenty of room for my fish to swim around but the base of the tank has quite a lot on it.
anyhow, i thought to myself the other day it was time to give the gravel a clean. i have a couple of bottom feeders to assist in keeping things looking good but realise not 'everything' will be to their taste
. bought myself a Prime Gravel Cleaner with 'unique self start siphon' etc. my first thought was 'how you going to get the bottom of the tube onto all the gravel with all the plants, pebbles etc' so i removed them all, leaving only gravel in the tank. proceeded to start with the gravel cleaner ... it started to siphon some water out alright, but no matter what sort of up and down motion i used (no jokes please!) i didn't see much debris rising in the tube ... however there was plenty debris rising in the rest of the tank ... couple of minutes into it i gave up ... tank was murkier than murky and the water i'd siphoned was practically clear 
.
to cut a long story short i've completely re-done my tank ... completely emptied it, cleaned gravel (with water taken from tank), re-sited all plants, rocks etc and filled with 2/3 new water as the rest was sooo murky, to leave it all to settle again was defeating the purpose!
so now my tank is fine again, spent about 7 hours yesterday re-doing it. thing is i'm back to where i started in many ways. my tanks is decorated as i like it with small rocks etc on gravel, so a lot of it is covered. to attempt to use a siphon again isn't really going to work unless i lift all these things out ... and as sure as night follows day the water will just go murky again
.
is there an easier solution? how often does gravel need a 'thorough' clean. please help!
have had my rio 180 set up for a few weeks now. have ordinary small pebble gravel in the bottom (about 2" or so deep.) tank has a few artifical plants, a small rock formation and a white chinese pebble display as well. still plenty of room for my fish to swim around but the base of the tank has quite a lot on it.
anyhow, i thought to myself the other day it was time to give the gravel a clean. i have a couple of bottom feeders to assist in keeping things looking good but realise not 'everything' will be to their taste
. bought myself a Prime Gravel Cleaner with 'unique self start siphon' etc. my first thought was 'how you going to get the bottom of the tube onto all the gravel with all the plants, pebbles etc' so i removed them all, leaving only gravel in the tank. proceeded to start with the gravel cleaner ... it started to siphon some water out alright, but no matter what sort of up and down motion i used (no jokes please!) i didn't see much debris rising in the tube ... however there was plenty debris rising in the rest of the tank ... couple of minutes into it i gave up ... tank was murkier than murky and the water i'd siphoned was practically clear .to cut a long story short i've completely re-done my tank ... completely emptied it, cleaned gravel (with water taken from tank), re-sited all plants, rocks etc and filled with 2/3 new water as the rest was sooo murky, to leave it all to settle again was defeating the purpose!
so now my tank is fine again, spent about 7 hours yesterday re-doing it. thing is i'm back to where i started in many ways. my tanks is decorated as i like it with small rocks etc on gravel, so a lot of it is covered. to attempt to use a siphon again isn't really going to work unless i lift all these things out ... and as sure as night follows day the water will just go murky again
.is there an easier solution? how often does gravel need a 'thorough' clean. please help!
)! And thats why my vac never looks like its sucking up anything.
) can get a solution!
