vacuum cleaners?

[ahollland92690]

will the vacuum things clean play sand?
how do you use these things?

 

[dkpate]

They are all by gravity. Called gravel vacs. You fill the whole canister with water by laying it on it's side in the tank, put the other end in a bucket that is lower than the tank. When the canister is filled, aim it toward the sand and pump it up and down a couple times to get the water flowing. You should just be able to push the end of the canister into the sand then lift it up and it should suck up all the "junk" but let the sand fall back out. And it will keep sucking water and debris out until you life the entire thing out of the water. The first time I tried it, it took me FOREVER to get it going! But now I can do it on the first try. Good luck!

 

[DragonFish71]

I just use my python for both our gravel and sand tanks. For the sand tanks, since the waste stays on top of the sand, I skim over the top of the sand.

 

[dkpate]

And you can go the cheaper route than the Pyton too. I bought just the inline valve at PetSmart for $10, then went to Home Depot and got 20' of clear plastic tubing for about $5 and made my own. I did not know you could suck gunk off the bottom of the tank with that though! WOW! Good to know! I thought it would clog it up....lol.

 

[mfdrookie516]

I had a hard time using one with play sand... It kept sucking it up, once i switched over to pfs, i never had that problem... Make sure that at the very least, you stir up that sand when you do a water change to avoid having deadly gas pockets build up

 

[JPKeenan]

you just can;t let the sand get that far up when you vac it. There is a slightly different feel than vac'ing gravel.

 

[ahollland92690]

I had no trouble with the process of the gravel vac and getting it to work my first go round although it did suck up some of my sand i dont mind i can always clean it really good and put it back.

 

[dkpate]

Awesome! You did better than I did lol!