Hey, everyone. Cory from Aquarium Co-Op.
And today I'm gonna teach you how to
gravel vac an aquarium and clean the
sponge filter. It's one of the few
questions I get over and over and over
again, and so I know when I demonstrate it in
the store,
people can learn quite a bit, and so I
thought, "Let's do a video and, you know,
(just) it's gonna be quick, short and sweet. But let's
get into it. So, first you're gonna need a
gravel vacuum. This is, I think it's a Lee's Kit,
but the Python ones work all the
same; Aqueon--they're all pretty similar--and
then you're gonna need a bucket or, as
I'm using today, I'm using a trash can on
wheels so--I do a lot of tanks and so
being able to wheel around works nice--and
so let me get the camera set up and we'll
start showing you some tips.
All right, so the first tip I have for you
is probably getting it so that all your
decor--which I don't have much the decor in this tank;
that's gonna be another video we're gonna shoot
after this on, getting this thing ready--but
moving as many things as you can out of
the way so that you don't have to stop
your siphon. So I've moved this sponge filter
all the way to the side there. Usually I would scrub
the sides for algae if I have any; in
this tank, which I don't. I do that first and
then all the objects in the water is
gonna when it starts gravel vaccing. So
first what I want to teach you is how to
start a siphon. This is a relatively
simple thing once you know how to do it.
The goal here is gonna be to put this
tube in the water--it fills up with water--and
then when the blue part, or green part, whichever
kit you have, goes above the rim,
the water will start flowing downward
and we're gonna to put the tube back into
the water at an angle just like this so
that we don't trap air. If I come back
in like this, it's gonna get an air bubble
and stop. So, we're gonna demonstrate that
a couple of times.
Got the water full all the way in here. We're gonna
lift it up--water starting to flow--we put
it back down and at the same angle, we have
a siphon going. Okay? We're gonna do that one more
time. So, tube is completely empty air
of water. All we got is air. We're starting it
brand new. Put it in an angle, goes in,
filled up with water.
Nothing will happen if it just stays like
this. Once I lift it up is when the
siphon will start going, and we put it right
back down in, we got our siphon going going, okay? The
next thing I want to teach you guys is
when you are gravel vaccing, do it in a
systematic row. So, I can't really do that
at this point just because i need to be
close to the camera, but let me
re-position it a little bit and I'm gonna
move back that sponge filter to the other side
so I can get a better position for
you.
All right, so what you wanna do is you
wanna go back and forth through your
aquarium in rows like you're mowing the
yard. You don't want to kind of just hunt and
peck--that's gonna miss a ton of stuff.
You also have to move your decor because
that's where all the debris settles, and
so I've got the hose crimped right now
and you should learn how to use this
technique so water can flow. And now I
crimp, water can't flow, and what you'll
see, I'm gonna do a spot over here so you
guys can watch. I'm picking up this
coarse sand right now and once the debris
lifts away from it, I can crimp the hose
and move on.
So that's the technique we're gonna
use, and we're gonna go to the corner here
and, like, right now I got the hose crimped and
there was a baby guppy in there but we've
got a snail there, we're gonna
separate the waste, and we're crimping the hose
and that's what drops the waste back down,
if you can see that. And then we move on.
and you don't want to let any of this
waste into the aquarium. Kind of think
of this as like a chimney: you want all
the smoke to go up out of the house, not
inside. So what happens is, with gravel
and sand and stuff like that, if you don't
crimp the hose and you're waiting for it to
come out, it takes a long time. We're
gonna to take out all this water. So the
goal would be: we do all the gravel and
the sponge and take out about one-third
of the water in this aquarium. So I'm
gonna go ahead and finish this up and
we'll get on to the sponge filter.
All right, and lastly, when you're finally
done and you want to take the hose out, put
your hand over the end of it and release
this, it'll suction cup your hand so that
way nothing falls back into the tank
when you take it out. It'll hold it, and you
can release it into your bucket or your
tote or whatever you're using. So, now we
need a fish bag and we're gonna
clean the sponge filter here. So now I've got
a fish bag, you know, just reuse one you
get from your fish store, that type of thing,
and the goal is to do this:
the goal is to get the bag in there, get
it all the way around that sponge filter
and then pull it up the top, disconnect the
hose so all the gunk stays inside. If I
just go in there and grab it, it's gonna release
a whole bunch of gunk. So, that's what we're
trying to do, and, yeah, so we'll show you
step-by-step. Get in there, get some water
in the bag, and (then) go from the bottom and
just try to barely move it as you're walking it in.
All right, so now
I can remove the top of the sponge filter that's in the bag,
just like that. You can lift this up and out.
And so you can see in the aquarium very
little disturbance at all, and we just
removed the filter. So now I wanna get the
bottom piece out--that's this right here--
and give it quick rinse, kinda in the bucket
where we took gunk out, and now we're
gonna wring this sponge in here and
make really brown water and keep pouring it
out 'till it comes clean. So, that's what we do
right now. And let me get on the ladder--that'll be easier
to show if I'm on the ladder. So you just
start wringing it out. And we're getting some
of the algae off and things like that all at the same time,
and we want to use the tank water is
because when we use the tank water, it doesn't
have chlorine in it, we're not killing any of the
bacteria, we're not gonna put it into
shock from a different pH, a different
temperature--that type of thing--so, you know,
you get it as clean as you can the first pass and
we've made lots of chocolate milk, like that's
brown water for sure. Pour that into your
bucket. You can save this water and use it on
your houseplants, stuff like that, it's full of
nitrogen. You know, you don't want to let
this sponge sit out for too long. After a
couple of minutes a lot of the bacteria will
have died, so you wanna keep it wet.
So we're gonna grab some more water and
I don't recommend taking it to the sink.
One, it wastes water, and two, you could
kill your bacterial colony doing that,
you know, it's not a high risk but it is
a risk, and I'd much rather put the freshwater
back into my aquarium here while I'm
taking out old water. So you can see
this one, not nearly as dark. It's telling,
you know, much cleaner if that passed. And
usually, unless you've neglected it for a
long time, you can get it in about three
passes and then it's never gonna be
a hundred percent clean which, that's actually fine,
you don't need it to be a hundred percent clean--
we just need it to be operational. All right.
And now we when I squeeze it out, you can see here
very little of any thing's coming out.
I'd say we're done. Let that go into the
tote or the bucket, give it one last squeeze,
and, yeah, there's gonna be a little castoff as we put
it back in the water. You grab the bottom
here. But it will clear itself back up.
It's a nice, healthy sponge filter ready
to do, you know, another, at least a month
of work, and this is what I recommend to
my customers and stuff like that. Unless
you have a reason to do a different
schedule, I start out with once a month
and about one-third of the water
gravel vaccing and servicing your
filtration. Now, if this was all planted--
which I'm gonna do a video on; I'm about
to plant this whole tank up that's why
I'm doing this--you wouldn't gravel vac,
you wouldn't go down into the gravel
where the plant roots are; you would
hover over the top just to pick up any
loose debris. And, so yeah, it's, you know,
real quick there; (didn't) it took me, you
know, if I was not to time-lapse this video I
think it took about 12 minutes, and so 40
gallon aquarium, 12 minutes, everyone can
do that I think. That's a very light load,
(to) keep a very healthy aquarium. I used a
little bit more than thirty percent here--
I was doing a little bit of demoing. Plus, I
don't run the water level all the way up
on this aquarium because I want to
breed these mystery snails, so, that's a
whole different video though. So, thanks
for hanging out guys.
Hope that helps. I know when you're
getting into it, that can be one
of the hardest things to understand: a good
gravel back and a good service of this
sponge (or) filtration you're using, but it
really helps and it's one of the best things
you can do to keep your aquarium healthy.
So, if you enjoyed the video, "like" it. If you
found it useful or you're part of a group
where someone doesn't know what they're
doing yet, link this video to them and
help them out. And, you know, thanks for
hanging out with me and we'll see you in the
next video.