For an in depth Aquarium Cleaning Article:
AQUARIUM CLEANING



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Monday, December 28, 2009

Aquarium Gravel Vacuum, Troubleshooting

Aquarium Gravel Vacuum Basics and Siphon Troubleshooting
From this article: “Aquarium Cleaning”


Aquarium vacuum, kinking BASIC:
For cleaning your aquarium (freshwater or saltwater) a Gravel Vacuum attached to a siphon or re-circulating filter works best. These vacuums are quite easy to use; simply push the bell of the vacuum into the gravel and quickly back out. If you are having problems with sucking gravel into the siphon hose, try kinking the hose with your other hand to slow the out flow to keep gravel from being sucked up. Make sure and lift ornaments out of the way and vacuum in as many dead spots as possible. It is important to get as much of this organic mulm/sludge out of the aquarium as possible as this is what leads to higher nitrates, ph crashes (due to nitric acid production during decay), and resulting in poor KH levels.
(Please click on picture to enlarge)

Starting the Gravel Vacuum is usually quite simple (depending upon the brand though). With the Lees or similar Gravel Vac, simply placing the end of the hose (water exhaust) into a bucket, the turning the “bell” of the vacuum into the tank and rotating it to remove air, then moving the vacuum bell up & down with quick actions will allow the quick start valve to start the siphon. If this valve breaks (the valve rarely lasts as long as the vacuum) or you have a vacuum without this feature, a quick “suck” on the end of the tube (below tank level) into the bucket should start the siphon with little effort.

Further Siphon Tips (including attached to hose):

• If your vacuum siphon does not start easily, this may mean that you have some water in the tubing that is blocking the siphon; ANY amount of water in the siphon tube can block the siphon from starting, especially when the tube has less vertical distance and more horizontal distance to where the water is exhausted to (bucket, garden, toilet, etc.). Make sure to evacuate ALL water prior to attempting to start a siphon.

• If your vacuum is connected to a hose or longer tubing, it is even more important to evacuate all water from this hose prior to starting the siphon. I recommend carefully rolling up the hose, keeping the end lower than the rest of the hose while all water is removed. You should store all hoes this way too for quicker siphon start in the future.

• If you fail in the first attempt to start a siphon with a long hose attached, you may end up with water in the hose that will block future attempts, so starting over by making sure all water is evacuated will save you much frustration.
Otherwise another method of starting a siphon with a long hose attached is to attach the female end of the hose to a faucet and turn on the faucet until all “bubbles” are blown out through the vacuum bell into the tank. Once this is done, simply detaching the hose from the faucet will immediately start the siphon.
Caution should be used in this second method that the vacuum bell is securely placed under the water and that you do not turn the hose on with too much force, otherwise this may result in the vacuum bell “jumping” out of the tank and making quite the mess or at the least the bell not staying under the surface of the water resulting in a failed siphon attempt.

• Finally attaching the hose to a “siphon pump” at either a sink or the faucet makes draining the tank (starting a siphon) quite easy, however this also wastes much water (although you can detach the siphon pump after starting the siphon if the exhaust from the hose is below the water level of the tank).

For the full article from which this post came from, please see:
“Aquarium Cleaning”

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