Doing Water Changes Without Vacuuming the Gravel?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
asm129

asm129

Gambusia
MFK Member
Dec 28, 2009
642
1
18
Cafe Lu
I have 2 tanks, a 210 and 240G. I have FX5's on both of them and when I change my water, I use a garden hose I attached to the quick stop valve, put it on the output nozzle, plug in the FX5 and drain the water out onto my lawn. It's pretty quick way to drain water from big tanks.

Let's say you don't have much visible waste on the tank floor. Can you just drain 70-80% of the water without gravel vacuuming and still get about the same results as you would if you took a python and gravel vacuumed the tank bottom? It would make things a lot easier for me if I could just put the garden hose attachment on my tanks and let them drain.
 
I use a python on all my changes, but only vacuum the sand every few weeks. As long as you have enough water movement to keep waste from settling on the bottom and it's removed into the filters then weekly vacuuming isn't necessary.
 
Use sand. i have sand in all my tanks. all the dirt stays on top and gets sucked into the filter. I never vacuum, if see too much dirt i just try to get it sucked up into the water changing hose.
 
its better to suck the substrate every once in a while. But IMO those big wcs are prolly a pretty good regiment. It would be better to get the debris as well though.
 
If you have gravel, you have to vacuum it once in a while. You can decide how often you do it based on how dirty the output is when you do vacuum it.
 
I do weekly water changes of 50%. I stir up the sand once a month to avoid bad bacterial pockets and the filter will pickup most of the stirred up waste. When I used gravel I did weeky water changes and monthly gravel vacs.
 
The problem with gravel is that it does look clean, but it's actually pack with poo. I'd go with either sand or bare if you want lower maintence
 
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