# Siphoning



## Ocean (Nov 20, 2014)

Do you need to siphone substrate? I was thinking no because plants eat the fish waste and my filter suctions strongly enough that I never see anything stick on the substrate.


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## CRS Fan (Apr 21, 2010)

Is you substrate gravel or a clay based product? Either way, I have always siphoned both (but other plant enthusiasts may disagree). You'll just have to take it slower and do it in sections, if it is a clay based product (ADA, Florabase, etc. etc.).

Best regards,

Stuart


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## mikebike (Sep 8, 2010)

I use sand and gravel in my tanks.
I extend my finger about 1 inch past the inlet of my syphon hose.

I use that finger to mix up the media to allow the debris/detrius to to be syphoned up.

OI also ave various sizes of small containers that have various holes/screens in them from a $ store.

I will put the syphn hose in it to prevent sucking up larger 'things' in the tanks.

It is surprising how fast a 3/4 inch syphon hose with 4 feet of head will suck up a LARGE amout of Hornwort from a tank, it sucked up a clump that filled up a 5 gallon bucket in less than one min.

I like to syphon into another container/slop bucket so that I get one more opportunity to look at what is being sucked up.

I frequently find small fish/fri swimming in the slop bucket and recover them.
to make it easier to catch them I place a large net/ $store butterfly net in the slop bucket and let the water flow go through


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## C-kidder (Aug 2, 2014)

When I do my planted shrimp tank which is ADA soil. I use a thin hose with a tiny siphon and kink the hose so that I can control the water flow. I clean about 4 square inches per water change but my tank is pretty small(8Gallon) so I don't like to change to much water at once. Kinking the hose to control the water flow has been the best trick I have found You can take it nice and slow around plant roots + livestock as well. Plus if you see something going up the hose you can stop it by pinching the kink and let it slide back into the tank as long as you didn't catch it to late.


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