how'd you like to do your gravel vacuuming without having to remove water? i usually do my vaccing when i do water changes, but sometimes its nice to be able to do a good deep cleaning without having to drain most of your water. here's how:
materials:
1 powerhead
2 lengths of plastic tubing, one longer for the vacuum one shorter for the filterbottle (the same diameter as your powerhead inlet/outlet)
1 plastic bottle/similar container
filter media
cut your bottle and fill with filter media. use a hot poker to make several holes at the bottom of the bottle large enough to let water out but not your media. fit one end of the short tube to the lid of the bottle and seal it so its watertight around the edges. now you can screw it on/off the bottle. attach the other end to the outlet of the powerhead. attach one end of the gravel vac tube to the inlet of the powerhead. make sure you get all the air out of the tubing and plug in your powerhead. voilla!
the idea is to use the suction of the powerhead instead of the siphon action that normally makes a gravel vac work. now you can collect all the debris in the bottle and have clean gravel without having to remove water from the tank!
the hardest part is getting all the air out of the tubing so that the powerhead will work. this is cheap and easy and if you already have a powerhead and a gravelvac you can make this for the price of a bottle of coke
(and maybe some scour pads/batting for media). i also used gravel in between the layers of filter.
materials:
1 powerhead
2 lengths of plastic tubing, one longer for the vacuum one shorter for the filterbottle (the same diameter as your powerhead inlet/outlet)
1 plastic bottle/similar container
filter media
cut your bottle and fill with filter media. use a hot poker to make several holes at the bottom of the bottle large enough to let water out but not your media. fit one end of the short tube to the lid of the bottle and seal it so its watertight around the edges. now you can screw it on/off the bottle. attach the other end to the outlet of the powerhead. attach one end of the gravel vac tube to the inlet of the powerhead. make sure you get all the air out of the tubing and plug in your powerhead. voilla!
the idea is to use the suction of the powerhead instead of the siphon action that normally makes a gravel vac work. now you can collect all the debris in the bottle and have clean gravel without having to remove water from the tank!
the hardest part is getting all the air out of the tubing so that the powerhead will work. this is cheap and easy and if you already have a powerhead and a gravelvac you can make this for the price of a bottle of coke
(and maybe some scour pads/batting for media). i also used gravel in between the layers of filter.
