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Recommend a good Gravel Vac for planted aquariums

M

Mortis

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Joined
17 Jun 2009
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414
Ok so for a long time now I have been trying to find a good gravel vac - either DIY or store bought for getting all the fine mulm out of the top layer of substrate and in between plants in my tank and have been unsuccessful.
Basically I need something with low gentle flow that just gets the fine particles but whatever I have tried just ends up causing issues. It should be gentle enough not to pick up or disturb the substrate too much or uproot carpeting plants.

So I have tried :
1] My regular hose which I use for water changes but obviously its too powerful
2] One branded gravel vac with a flow adjustment valve. This would either break siphon if set to a slow enough speed or get clogged with uprooted plants and gravel if the speed was increased. Kind of a shitty designed one so again not too surprised.
3] DIY using various sized drink bottles with 8-10-12mm pipes. Ok but not the greatest
4] Most recently I tried a battery operated gravel vac - the common Chinese design one and not similar to the Eheim one. This held the most promise but still failed. The pump itself and the flow was gentle enough but when a pipe is connected to the outlet, siphon effect increases the flow rate and it clogs. The other option is to connect a mesh bag to the outlet and recycle and filter the water in the tank itself. This also failed because the mesh bag provided wasnt fine enough to trap mulm and just released it into the water column. Jerry rigging some cloth bags made them clog up in seconds and pop off.

Im sure most of us who have planted tanks have this problem and was wondering what everyone uses and recommends for this purpose. Looking for either DIY or store bought options and if a particular design is good.

Thanks in advance !!
 
I’ve seen on Green Aqua they used Oase FiltoSmart to vacuum gravel. I’m not vacuuming my gravel but if I decide to do so I would definitely buy Oase FiltoSmart 60 with bracket and fill it with polishing filter floss.
 
If option 4 worked before the siphon effect, you could try to siphon it to a bucket kept at the same height as the tank's water column, neutralizing the siphon effect.
 
I always found the JBL AquaEx to work well. It has a bell shaped end with tines which reduces the flow nicely. It slightly lifts the substrate to clean it, but not enough to suck it up.
 
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I am not a huge gravel vacuum fan. First of all I hate to disturb my substrate, secondly my tanks are so densely planted that it's very hard to get in and around with a gravel vac, but occasionally I use this one and it works well for spot cleaning accumulated mulm and detritus.

Cheers,
Michael
 
LMuhlen said:
If option 4 worked before the siphon effect, you could try to siphon it to a bucket kept at the same height as the tank's water column, neutralizing the siphon effect.
Click to expand...
Ooooh interesting !! I never thought of that. Ill give it a try if I can find a stool thats the right height. Actually even if its halfway up it should reduce the effect to a decent amount.
 
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