Wondering

[SlyPolak]

I was just wondering how some people do their gravel vacs. with planted tanks...... I always seem iffy becaause the roots


How do YALL do it

 

[anshuman]

do you want a video? i can make one.

I use the plastic siphons , I start by very soft thumping on the gravel (enuf the disturb the settled dirt), the debris/dirt lifts off, i lift off the siphon and it sucks the floating debris/dirt, as i see that clear, i move to next patch, the bucket is full of dirt/debris. next bucket has brownish water and not that much dirt. so after siphoning off 50% water, i refill it with the 1 day stale de-chlorinated water.

I do not STIR the the gravel AT ALL. that just lifts the nutrients out of amazonia soil and damages the roots.

 

[SlyPolak]

A video would help yes, but do not go out of you way... I still do not see how its effectively done without disturbing the delicate roots...

 

[anshuman]

okay, you will have wait.......15 days .

 

[SlyPolak]

15 daYS

lol, its cool... I mean I don't have any special substrate just gravel but everytime I do it I try to be super careful and I don't "cut" any of the roots but a lot just always seem to end up on top of the gravel when I'm through.
I even tried the way you are supposed to do sand but that seems to make it worse because I just end up pulling on too many roots!

 

[RadaR]

Generally we don't gravel vaccum in planted tanks due to not enough space or to not disturb the roots. Thanks to the large circulation/flow reccomended for planted tanks (10x the volume of the tank turned over every hour) this makes sure that most of the physical debris gets sucked into the filter and gets caught in mechanical media. It's just a case then of changing the filter floss every week or two weeks to prevent clogging. Any debris left over in the tank can be simply siphoned off the top of the gravel with some flexible tubing. In high-tech tanks espeically, we are advised to "swoosh" the plants every few water changes to remove any trapped debris that might be there. This reduces the risk of the debris leaching ammonia that in combination with light causes algae.

 

[SlyPolak]

AHHH!! makes sense... I think I have the 10x the volume or atleast close to it but I still see some "debris" sitting on top of the gravel here and there... So I think I will just syphon off the top with my vac.... TANX

 

[Ryefish]

I gravel vac in the open areas, where there is no plants and no roots to damage. I shove the syphon tube in quite far until the water runs clear and move to the next bit. Around the plants, i just vaccuum over the top of the gravel, and if i need to i run the syphon close to the leaves to catch any shrimp and snail poop (messy critters)

 

[lljdma06]

I use flexible tubing and just suck the debris on the surface. I have sand beds now, so I haven't really gravel-vacumned in a long time. I do stir my sand on occasion, it kind of puts some of the nutrients below the surface. It seems to be working.