Realistically, Is It Possible To Vacuum 5 Gallon?

[HYJ]

I had some problem with PH drop and I have just read another post that basically had similar problem.

After reading the post, I realized that not cleaning gravels with enough vacuum can cause PH drop.

But then the thing is, my tank is only 5 gallon and I wonder if it's practical/realistic to clean the gravel via vacuuming.

I am afraid of the fact the tank is so small that i will basically suck up all the water in the process of vacumming.

I bought the API liquid PH test kit, and it seems like my PH is actually lower than 6.0

In this case what should I do?

Upto this point, I have just dumped out 20% of water using a cup weekly, and I have never cleaned the gravel for almost 9 months.

 

[waterdrop]

O dear, the gravel cleaning part of weekly tank maintenance is pretty basic and not something you want to skip. I'd hope there would be somebody out there making a "small" gravel-cleaning siphon, even if you have to find it on the internet. Perhaps the members can help. It just needs to be a slim cylinder a little bigger than the siphon hose and it should work fine, hopefully they'd give you a skinnier siphon hose with that size so that the siphoning process would go a little slower and not empty the tank too fast.

Even if you couldn't find that right away what I'd do then is to use some other implement to turn over and stir up the gravel, all the way down to the tank bottom, as you come along with the other hand holding your plain siphon tube. One great thing about a tank that small is that it would be easy to do 70% water changes each time, so your water parameters will stay close to those of your tap which I'd assume has a higher pH than you're seeing now. If you've become pretty far off from tap values then you might want to work your way up to these percentages more gradually.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[kelly528]

I vacuum my 5.5 and even my 2.5. Never thought of doing it any other way. I have a siphon with a mouth about 1" in diameter. Works great. The only thing is that in really small tanks (like my 2.5g) it is easier to start with mouth suction just wrap your hand around the end of the hose so your lips don't touch the actual hose and drop the hose in the bucket before you get a mouthful of tankwater!


Also, don't worry about sucking up all the water. The tank has a smaller footprint as well as water volume, so I find that the tank is still 70-80% full by the time its clean.

 

[HYJ]

Thanks for the reply, but if I do 70% water change, wouldn't it remove most of the beneficial bacteria and force me to go through the whole cycling process again?

O dear, the gravel cleaning part of weekly tank maintenance is pretty basic and not something you want to skip. I'd hope there would be somebody out there making a "small" gravel-cleaning siphon, even if you have to find it on the internet. Perhaps the members can help. It just needs to be a slim cylinder a little bigger than the siphon hose and it should work fine, hopefully they'd give you a skinnier siphon hose with that size so that the siphoning process would go a little slower and not empty the tank too fast.

Even if you couldn't find that right away what I'd do then is to use some other implement to turn over and stir up the gravel, all the way down to the tank bottom, as you come along with the other hand holding your plain siphon tube. One great thing about a tank that small is that it would be easy to do 70% water changes each time, so your water parameters will stay close to those of your tap which I'd assume has a higher pH than you're seeing now. If you've become pretty far off from tap values then you might want to work your way up to these percentages more gradually.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tolak]

The water doesn't cycle, the filter media does. I do 75%+ water changes on 5 gallon tanks used for fry hatching & initial growout without any cycling problems.

 

[OldMan47]

Tolak is quite right HYJ. You will not affect your cycle by doing a water change. When I find that I am having problems of water quality, I have been known to do a 90% change leaving only enough water to cover the fish then refilling to get my quality back up. Even as little as ta day later, the water looks much better than before I started and there is no impact on the cycle. It does impact heaters and filters in that I must shut them off to keep them from running while dry. They get plugged back in as soon as I have enough water to use them again.