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What is the best Water Vacuum to Buy?
QUESTION: Could someone please tell me the best water vacuum to buy to clean my
fish tank? Is there such a beast? Something that will clean the water
but keep the water in the tank at the same time? I have a vacuum that
you hook up to the pump, but the vacuum bag stays in the tank and lets
little fine pieces of the stuff I am trying to get out of the water back
into the water.
ANSWER: Yes there is such a thing. They range in price from about ten dollars up
to 60 or 70 dollars. I got the 15.00 one and it works just fine. It is a
long plastic tube about 3" wide that you shake up and down in the water.
This causes the water to siphon out into a bucket that you keep on the
floor. In the tube is a grate that sucks up the stone in the bottom of
your tank but eventually drops the stone because it is too heavy, but
does suck up the dirt into your bucket. You use this when you are doing
a partial water change and you kill two birds with one stone. Hope this
helps. Get them at your local pet/fish store.
In my opinion, the best type of vac are the ones that do NOT have the bag
and instead draw the wastes out with the water into a bucket. This is
simply because it encourages you to do partial water changes. Having the
bag thing and leaving the water in your tank tends to make people lazy
about changing the water as well. With the non-bag setup, you vac the
gravel and remove water in a single step. With the bag, you might not
feel like do the water change later after the vac. IMO, partial water
changes are the best thing you can do to keep a tank healthy. I would
argue that I can keep a tank healthier with NO filter and lots of partial
water changes than someone else could do with tons of high tech filtering
and NO water changes.
So my advice is, don't ignore your water changes and your tank and fish
will thank you!
Sound like to me that you don't want to bother with water changes. Either
to much of a hassle, to messy, or to lazy. Just cleaning the waste out a
tank is not good enough. You need the water changes to get the Disolved
Organic compounds (DOCs) out. DOC are things like fatty acids and urine
excreted by the fish. The urine in particular has a hormone that stunts
your fishes growth. Some fish are more sensitive than others to this
hormone. If you don't want to do large partial water changes for what ever
reason, then do small ones. It's better to do small changes on a regular
bases then it is to do a big one every 3 weeks. This is because you get
the DOC's out early. A good suggestion is to keep a gallon milk jug handy.
Dip it into the tank once everyday. Then just fill it back up and pour it
in the tank. With such a small amount of water being changed in say a 20
gallon tank, you really don't have to worry about a dechlorinator.
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