I have to move my 300 gallon tank that has 200lbs of rock in it. Any tips for getting the gravel out and without scratching the hell out of the glass? Thanks
Best Way to remove gravel from large tank
- Thread starter catfishacr
- Start date
Here's the best way I've done it. While the tank is still full start a powerful syphon (1.5" tubing or something with unrestricted flow) then just gravel vac all the gravel out. Your draining the tank anyways
Never used a shop vac for this, so these are the manual methods I've done. The below assumes you have things in the tank (fish, plants, decorations that don't want to remove from the tank first.)
A way I've used (for deep tanks) is to get a large diameter hose and siphon it out (with water.) It helps (a lot) if there is a larger diameter funnel inverted on the input side as it will reduce the amount of gravel. (Funnel can be attached with silicone.) And it does take a little practice to pull out gravel without getting the hose jammed. You can do the same without a funnel by hovering the siphon an inch or so above the gravel with a little practice. After a bit, I just put the water back in the tank and repeat the siphon.
Shallow tanks or ones where you can easily reach the bottom are probably okay to handle with a large cup (perforated on the bottom) or a floor dust-type waste pan. In either case it takes patience, but in the long run, I've cleared most of the gravel that way.
In my experience, the latter two methods cause it to get cloudy fast, so if there are fish I usually have to make the efforts over several hours. The siphon method caused me minimal cloudiness, so it was much faster.
I have also removed gravel after draining the tank. Physically that seemed harder than any of the other methods when I was working on a deep tank and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're up for some labor.
A way I've used (for deep tanks) is to get a large diameter hose and siphon it out (with water.) It helps (a lot) if there is a larger diameter funnel inverted on the input side as it will reduce the amount of gravel. (Funnel can be attached with silicone.) And it does take a little practice to pull out gravel without getting the hose jammed. You can do the same without a funnel by hovering the siphon an inch or so above the gravel with a little practice. After a bit, I just put the water back in the tank and repeat the siphon.
Shallow tanks or ones where you can easily reach the bottom are probably okay to handle with a large cup (perforated on the bottom) or a floor dust-type waste pan. In either case it takes patience, but in the long run, I've cleared most of the gravel that way.
In my experience, the latter two methods cause it to get cloudy fast, so if there are fish I usually have to make the efforts over several hours. The siphon method caused me minimal cloudiness, so it was much faster.
I have also removed gravel after draining the tank. Physically that seemed harder than any of the other methods when I was working on a deep tank and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're up for some labor.
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