Ingenious gravel vac system

[ChrisD90]

Saw a video of someone who had attached a Turkey baster to their gravel vac to help stir up debris in the gravel in heavily planted tanks. Has anyone tried it? I think it looks like a fantastic idea which I will definitely try later today. 

[ChrisD90]

I just made mine and only cost $2 I will try it and let you know how I go.

[Minanora]

Hmm, that is an idea. I may try my hand at this as well.

I use a turkey baster to vacuum my floating plastic breeder. Lol

[ChrisD90]

On 11/18/2021 at 5:04 PM, Minanora said:

Hmm, that is an idea. I may try my hand at this as well.

I use a turkey baster to vacuum my floating plastic breeder. Lol

I made a mini syphon out of airline tube and had my net over a cup in case I accidentally sucked up any fry lol 

[Odd Duck]

On 11/17/2021 at 7:59 PM, ChrisD90 said:

Saw a video of someone who had attached a Turkey baster to their gravel vac to help stir up debris in the gravel in heavily planted tanks. Has anyone tried it? I think it looks like a fantastic idea which I will definitely try later today. 

I did try it. It wasn’t that helpful to have it attached, but I do use it separately to blast debris out from between the rocks and pots in my 75 gallon tank.  It works very well to do that.  It was more cumbersome than helpful attached.

I don’t want to blast too much in my sand capped dirt bottom tanks (majority of my tanks), so I don’t tend to use it in those.

[ChrisD90]

On 11/18/2021 at 5:04 PM, Minanora said:

Hmm, that is an idea. I may try my hand at this as well.

I use a turkey baster to vacuum my floating plastic breeder. Lol

It worked a treat I was actually surprised how much easier it made it best $2 I have spent in a while thats for sure. I managed to clean under stuff I don't want to move and picked up a lot of debris. Definitely worth trying.

On 11/18/2021 at 5:08 PM, Odd Duck said:

I did try it. It wasn’t that helpful to have it attached, but I do use it separately to blast debris out from between the rocks and pots in my 75 gallon tank.  It works very well to do that.  It was more cumbersome than helpful attached.

I don’t want to blast too much in my sand capped dirt bottom tanks (majority of my tanks), so I don’t tend to use it in those.

I found it actually made my job much easier my tank is built into a bar and is very awkward to clean so it really did help me, it was a good cheap experiment overall for me.

[Bev C]

 I always had trouble using an old reliable  vac with only having one hand. When I was upgrading to a bigger tank I was debating  on buying a battery operated vac  … I looked on youtube for reviews for the battery one I was going to buy  .and I found this video by mistake.  My brother  loves to build things, and he built me one. I have been using this for a year. And I will not go back to using the old one. It is not pretty, but it works for me. I know it works great on black sand. on my 55 gallon  Can not say about if works on gravel, some says in the video comments' that it does  work with gravel.

But the key to using this 

1: make sure you have  big air pump it  works better (I have one  for over 100 -125 gallons)

2: make sure your air stone is large enough, I use a 4-6 inch square long one like this Click Me

3: make sure you have it  short enough works better if it is under the water. I made mine too tall, had to cut it down some. To work better,

4: have a very long air line tube to be able to move around easy  you might have to replace after a year use 

5: The Net is not hard to wash out  I use a spray  hose turn the net inside and out

 

 

Edited November 21, 2021 by Bev C