Make your own gravel vacuum for your Aquarium

A very handy piece of aquarium equipment is a gravel vac. They are useful for getting debris out of the gravel at the bottom of your tank. But they can be expensive, so I'm going to show you how to make a gravel vac for a very little sum!

What you will need:

-Some plastic tubing, not to long, about a metre or so.
-A Coca-Cola bottle or something like it.

Step 1 Get some plastic tubing

Get some plastic tubing. My local aquarium shop had some that I presume was for filters. He gave me some for free. It needs to be about a metre long, or about 3 feet.

Comments

[lalexander]

if you use tubing that is slightly larger than the inside diameter of the neck of the bottle, you can cut the tube at an extreme angle, and stick the tip thru and thenpull it thru with plyers to make a very tight fit. this will do away with the cap all together.

[sandar]

since you already put the entire hose into the tank, it's enough to close one end of the hose with your finger (or just squeeze the hose) and once the hose is over the bucket just let go

[dom13marco]

Thank you! I saved quite a bit of money using this.

[ll0ll]

nice instructable, simple and effective :) saves needed to buy one One tip though: Rather than sucking, which inevitably results in drinking the water(!!), place the entire tube and bottle into the water until it fills up, then once it has, place your thump over the tube end (still underwater), and then take out that end, place it over your bucket, and remove your thump.

[J@50n]

my guppies make an awful mess that smells after a week or so, how often would you remccomend using this? and you should post a video of you using it. also another question, does this take a lot of water from the tank or just a little ammount? Thanks

[Sam McCauley]

Hi Starburst. Use this when you want to change your tank water. How often do you change your tank water, I would recommend using it about once a week if it gets smelly. You dont want a smelly tank! For how much water it takes, it depends on the size of the bottle, make it a little larger if you have a big tank, or make it small if you have a little tank, make sure there is enough round plastic for the gravel though. Sam

[J@50n]

ok that answers my question, thanks Sam!

[Bartboy]

Cool! If you had a log enough hose, you could put the end outside! Or use the bottle as a funnel to fill the aquarium after!