Aquarium cleaner

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Basic knowledge

Aquarium cleaner is a simple and cheap tool with price about $3. It is designed for pumping the water out/into the tank while the water is moved from one container to another container. From time to time you should pump out some water from the aquarium and replace it with some new water (you shouldn’t use any water taken from the duct without leaving it 1-2 days in some bucket).

Water changes

I recommend you to change from about 10% up to 20% of entire water. Depending on your tank’s capacity, this number might vary from 5% (for very large aquariums) up to 40% (small fish bowls). Water changes are necessary when there are too many excrements at the bottom of the tank or if you want to simulate tropical rain for fish which originate from tropical forests. However, this process sometimes happens for no apparent reason; just because you want to clean the environment. There applies a simple principle saying “less is more” in this case because you shouldn’t do water changes everyday. Do it and your fish will be stressed. General suggestions and experiences say that 1 maintenance per week is adequate. All in all, you are not asked to do this action on a regular basis. Everything depends on conditions within your aquarium, on fish amount, plants, substrate’s capability to decompose the waste, on aeration, on driftwood presence, etc. Especially the driftwood decoration colours entire water and it becomes yellow or brown as time goes by. Please, bear in mind that brown or yellow water colour is not dangerous for any fish specimen! Fish are beings which live in the tank, so don’t try to simulate “clean and perfect human house” there! But I agree that man should change water from time to time no matter if there is any driftwood or other decoration which causes coloured water.

In addition, changing 20% of water will not result in crystal-clear and transparent water. It will work for about 2-3 days and then colours usually come to their previous state.

Basically, you may notice that I am talking about water changes all the time. How to change water in an aquarium? Simple... Use an aquarium cleaner.

Video

Feel free to download our video which shows how to pump the water with aquarium cleaner right here. It's a mpg file, type MPEG-1, 640x480, approximately 22.5 MB.

The principle

A fish tank cleaner works on the principle that two water entities at two different altitudes interconnected by a tube achieve their equilibrium point after both water levels reached the same altitude or if the water mass in both tanks was moved to the lowest available point without being connected together through the tube. If the water has to move into lower point, it might pass through higher point than it is actually at.

This is the reason why an aquarium has to be placed at a higher position than a “destination” container (a tank for used water). Of course, if you are about to move new water to the fish tank, you must place it somewhere above your aquarium. The head should be 50 cm at least.

The device

An aquarium cleaner is a long, flexible plastic tube which has a hard and enlarged tube at it’s end. Moreover, there are several variants available on the market:

A manual pump. A plastic bubble which contains air and if you press the bubble it starts to pump. However, if the enlarged end of the cleaner is present in the water, then it will pump the water out from the aquarium.

Another solutions are are cleaners powered by „mouth“. You put the flexible end into your mouth and then you “suck” (not really, but it happens sometimes) the water until it starts to flow from the source tank to the destination point automatically. This happens once there is enough under pressure in the tube.

Warning

You have to be careful if you use a cleaner, because it may suck small fish as well. Some cleaners have nets at the enlarged part, but the pressure might harm the fish anyway. And I did not mention the stress which fish could go through once they are, or nearly are, sucked out from their aquarium. They can easily die because of such stress.

You should pay great attention when cleaning the substrate. If there is enough under pressure, small gravel will move from your aquarium into the bucket. This happens especially when the substrate consists of sand or little rocks. If you don´t want this situation to happen you have to choke the flexible end of the cleaner, so that the pressure at the other end will be smaller and it will not suck the substrate.

Naturally, I think that there is no reason to say that the aquarium cleaner should be cleaned when the work is finished.

Picture

Feel free to visit The Gravel Vacuum at firsttankguide.net too!

Aquarium cleaner

has been viewed times since June 30, 2009.