vacuuming sand

[adampetherick]

How do people do this, can you buy specific sand vacumes?

[sophie]

I use an ordinary gravel vac with as long a "bell" as possible; the sand is too heavy for much of it to travel all the way out of the tank. no hassles, much easier than gravel.

[Emma Turner]

A length of hose does the trick. Many people find that a short length of clear rigid piping (also available from your lfs) pushed into the end of the piece of flexible hose helps you to have more control over where you wish to siphon from. Then you place that end of the hose in the water and either just suck on the other end of the hose (but be quick or else you'll get a mouthful of dirty tank water - not good) or else you can buy small 'siphon bulbs' to manually start the siphoning process.

Emma

[adampetherick]

Thanks for the replies, I'd thought a gravel vac would have sucked all the sand out the tank

[sophie]

It might with a short bell on the end, if you stuck it deep into the sand all the time, but sand isn;t like gravel - it packs too closely together to get gungey. you just siphon the ick off the top.