Syphoning Sand! How To.

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brewyn

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hello all, as we seem to have covered the rocks I thought maybe we could talk sand. It would seem that more and more people are converting to the more natural look of sand, rather than the traditional gravel, I, myself being one of them. I have just done my weekly water changes and substrate cleaning, but for the first time I am cleaning sand, it was a very terrible atempt as I appeared to syphon away most of the sand. how do other folks clean there sand without losing so much of it.????????
 
Tricky one.Depends on what sand it is.If it is something fine like aragonite,then yes it will be hard to clean without syphoning it out.You could have a look for a low powered battery gravel cleaner that may pull the cr** out and leave the sand behind,or use the the attachment that comes with these (the bit you shove into the gravel and try to somehow attach it so some small bore pipe ie airline and just syphon it out) I have just pulled down my marine reef and have 30kg of aragonite which wasnt cheap,and for this very reason decided not to use it in the malawi tank.So I went out bought some coarser grade of coral sand,which i know I can clean without syphoning half of it out.Best of luck :good:
 
LMAO! Reminds me of when I was breaking down the tanks to move 835 miles and WANTED to siphon the sand out to be faster......it didnt work so well. :hyper:

But for you, it worked easily! :lol:

If your using a PYTHON turn the valve so your suction slows when hitting the sand.

For me, its short, quick dips into the sand that works.
 
will you folks stop using snakes to syphon off your tanks, ITS CRUEL. lol
 
THE AMAZING TANKS A LOT SAND SAVER

I don’t know anything about cleaning sand, as I have never used it in my tanks. I have crushed coral in my mbuna setup and it does have many small particles. When using the siphon and cleaning the substrate you do get a small quantity of material being removed.

From school geography (that’s if you took it as a subject) we all know that as water slows it looses it “carrying capacity” and drops any suspended sediment that it might be carrying. Thus deltas and estuaries are formed where rivers meet the sea and slow down. This is the same principle for the settling tube

My suggestion to people using sand and loosing a lot of material during substrate cleaning would be to incorporate a small settling tub along the line of the siphoning hose. This would let the sand settle to the bottom of the tub (lets you keep your sand) while the water would still drain off through an exit hole and continue on down the pipe.

When you have all the water you desired siphoned out of the tank, simply remove the settling tub from each hose, bring to the sink and give the sand a good wash to remove the rest of the poo and other nasty stuff and pop it back in the tank.

Very simple but effective.

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let me know what you think?

If I had good looks I'd be dangerous!!

tanks
 
very good idea tanks! think I will try that one out. cheers.
 
Yeah it’s a very simple idea and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. The only problem I could possible see would be starting the siphon. But I can’t see why it would be any different as it is a sealed siphon system. The tub would just have to be truly airtight.

Also I think that this would allow a better substrate cleaning as you wouldn’t be worried about loosing the sand and you could be far more vigorous with the substrate
 
That's basically the method I used to use, but much more simplified - I'd run the python as normal except run the water into a large bowl in the sink - the water overflows and the sand sinks.

Now of course, I don't need to clean the sand because I make use of the filters to provide the current necessary to keep debris from settling in the first place. Every now and then I use an airline tube to collect where it builds up in a couple of places, but otherwise since nothing settles into the sand it's easy to keep it virtually maintenance free.
 
to be honest tanks, with the fish tanks that still have gravel in, I use a bucket with a hole in the bottom, it has 3 different grades of sponges in, I SIPHON the water through this bucket first and into another bucket, and then add the water back into the tank.

another thing I used to do, but only with gravel, was to use the pipe from the external and SIPHON the crap straight into the filter.
 

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