Siphoning water

[tangjyd]

Hi guys,

Have a question and I hope you can help me! . When you guys do water changes for your tank, do you just siphon the water or do you attempt to remove the dirt from the gravel/ soil too?
It its the latter, how do you avoid uprooting the plants?


Thank you!

Regards

[jeffL]

I'm new so dont take this as an advice

I change water once a week by scooping water from my 32 litre tank and then once a month i'll siphon the gravel to remove dirt/poo. I use the included wide head attachment so it doesn't disturb the plants as the sucking force is distributed, i learned the hard way as i tried without the head attachment and it sucked everything up with so much force.

[Blue Whale]

Left hand on the tube to control the flow rate, but don't squeeze too hard. Right hand you have to guide the sucking head.

Press in, dig in, pull out, slowly release the force and allow the dirt to be suck out. Suggest you siphon when you see too much poo poo. Not on cycle basis.

[tangjyd]

Hmm okay, but I still can't imagine siphoning without disrupting the short foreground plants, those bigger stem plants seems more possible haha.

Thanks for the advice too!

[stormhawk]

Just get a gravel vacuum, or a siphon with a sieve attachment to prevent sucking up gravel/plants/fishes. I just bought a new siphon and it's awesome.

[Blue Whale]

There are two kinda siphons, one use for kerosene/vegetable oil tin, the other would be the one use for aquariums.

So where can you find the ones for aquariums? Now the head is different. Aquarium type siphon usually have a suction cap like, whilst the kerosene tin siphon is long regular small opening. Aquarium siphon can be found at hardware shop, LFS, even pasat malam (Mobile Night Market, also known as flea market but is highly mobile).

Now you already know that aquarium tank uses white net instead of green net. So you can also slow down the flow rate by covering it with white net but that would defeat the purpose of the suction cup. Since you know certain plant tyes have very short roots, when you siphon, you have to very very slow with your left hand and on the right, if not, you will be uprooting your plants such as hc.

[stormhawk]

A siphon with a gravel vacuum-like attachment is good enough. You can basically remove the gunk from the gravel bed, without really disturbing the plants. Or just fashion out a long stick from bamboo skewers aka "satay sticks", and just disturb the gravel around the plants to shake up the sediment, which can be sucked out during the siphoning stage.

The one I purchased is made by Hagen, from their Marina range of products. This is the one I own now:

http://www.hagen.com/usa/aquatic/pro...01110600020101