Re: Gravel Cleaning and Filtering

In the past I had a similar problem with a tank, what I did in the end was a
little tricky, but I connected a gravle filter hose to a power head, then
pumped it into a plastic bin (new one not old one), then used a internal
power filter with a fine mesh on it to pump the water back into the main
tank. it's wasn't completely easy on my own, and had to get the help of a
friend to control the power for the power heads and also to hold a hose.
This was I was able to clean the gravel and keep most of the water.

A slightly easier but slower way was use the gravel filter to clean the
gravel and syphon into the bin, then when it was nearly full I stopped the
cleaning for a while and left the water in the bin to stand for 30 mins,
most of the heavy stuff settled to the bottm and I was able to put most of
the water back..

After all the stuffing around with the above, what I do now is just syphon
the gravel from the tank via a hose into a bin, when the bin is half full
(so I can still move it) I take it outside and hose it down, then put the
gravel into another bucket, then do the above again untill all the gravel is
removed from the tank, once done, I just pour the gravel back into the tank
(slowly). I also keep most of the water in plastic bins to settle then use a
powerhead to pump most of it back into the tank.

This last was gets cleaner gravel, but is heaver on the back.




"Bill Stock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I've got the Pond Fish in a 65 gallon tank for the winter, so I'm a little
> new to the aquarium cleaning.
> I'm using an AquaClear 800 and two Penguins for the RUGF. All intakes are
> pre-filtered.
>
> I've been using a Python to clean the gravel every two weeks. I stop when
> I've removed about 30% of the water, but the gravel is still not as clean
as
> I'd like. There still seems to be a lot of fine crap in the water after
> cleaning. The existing filter does nothing to trap this, but it does
> eventually settle out of course. I suspect this is extra food, as the fish
> seem quite busy chasing this stuff.
>
> So is there a better method for cleaning the gravel? Will a change to a
> canister filter remove more of the fine crap?
>
>
>