Best way to vacuum gravel around heavily planted areas?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

neurotik

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Apr 24, 2009
Messages
223
Location
Carmichaels, PA
I'm a bit concerned that I'm not cleaning my gravel quite as well as I could/should be each week when I do maintenance on my 55 gallon planted tank due to the fact that I have quite a bit of plants around the background which make it difficult for me to get my python down to the back areas of the gravel and vacuum effectively without risk of uprooting my plants or knocking them over and such.

Is there any method to making this a bit easier, as I'm sure there is plenty of debris down in the gravel in the back part of my tank that I would really like to get cleaned out this weekend, but I don't want to knock half of my plants over trying to jam the end of my python down through all of them and moving them around and uprooting half of them in the process.
 
i have the same concern. i was suggested to use a turkey baster to swish the water away and then just let the filter take over from there.
 
I've read suggestions like that before too, but I don't really like to stir up a bunch of crap in my water and then just hope that my filter takes care of it over time. I was hoping there was some way I could get my vac down to the gravel to suck up a bunch of the stuff directly out of the tank, even if it was only something I could do every couple of weeks, I think it would be helpful in the long run.
 
just wave the end of your gravel vac over the spot your vacuming and it will kick up anything on top of the gravel and then it will suck it up with the water. Anything under the gravel near the plants the plant roots will take care of.
 
i just dont gravel vac. mom2reds is right about that. going over the top of the plants getting as close as you can moving it around will kick up dirt. gravel vac can break roots which can be a pretty bad thing with root feeders like crypts and swords.
 
Back
Top Bottom