When I was at the LFS, an employee was talking about how he siphons every nook and cranny when he cleans their Solana display tank to remove all of the built up detritus. This got me thinking after I tried this with the normal aquarium siphoning hose everyone uses, was there a better way to get into the tiny spaces and openings as it was not getting the job done to my expectations? I thought about the dentist’s evacuation tool they use to suck the saliva out of your mouth when they are working on your teeth. I performed a quick search to see if anything was already available which could be adapted to my aquarium needs. Surprisingly enough, there was not.

The Plan

Build a better and economical replacement for the normal gravity fed aquarium siphoning hose which will improve my husbandry practices with better exporting of detritus with positive impact by driving down nutrient build up in tank.

• Parts List:

  • 16 Gallon 6.5 HP Shop Vac (Catalog Number: 931-17-11)
  • 48″ Airline Tube – Flexible
  • 2 1/2″ to 1 1/4″ Reducing Couple
  • 1-1/4″ Micro Cleaning Kit (Straight Wand, Curved Wand, Crevice Tool, Round Brush, Oval Brush, 1-1/4″ to Micro Reducing couple)

• Instructions:

  1. Using the 2 1/2″ lock-on hose supplied with the Shop Vac, remove fitting that is not the lock-on end from the flexible hose.
  2. Cut 2 1/2″ flexible hose supplied to 2 1/2″ sticking out of lock-on fitting or 4 1/2″ total length if were removed from lock-on fitting.
  3. Reattach the fitting removed in first step to the freshly cut end of the 2 1/2″ flexible hose
     
     

     Shortened Hose to Size

  4. Attach accessories to Shop Vac in following order: 2 1/2″ lock-on hose, 2 1/2″ to 1 1/4″ reducing couple, 1 1/4″ to micro couple, 1/4″ flexible airline tube, micro straight wand, micro curved wand, and final micro attachment (Crevice Tool, Round Brush, or Oval Brush).
     
     

     Attachements

     
     
     

     Attachments

  5. Once everything hooked up, pinch the flexible airline tube to control the suction flow.

The Goal

Near zero suspended detritus when blow off LR using Maxi Jet 1200 circulation pump as part of normal weekly maintenance thus maintaining undetectable Nitrates and Phosphates.

The Hypothesis

The build up of detritus found in display tank increases detectable Nitrates and Phosphates. Reducing detritus will assist with the reduction of nutrients in the aquarium water column to undetectable levels.

Observations & Notes

2009-11-21: Modified Instructions to use a higher HP shop vac as the 1.1 hp portable could not maintain a good suction and disappointed by the 2.5 hp. Bought highest rated Shop Vac the local hardware store sold which was 6.5 hp.

2009-11-28: Modified Instructions to cut the 2 1/2″ lock-on tube to shorter length as water was backing up in dangling tube

2009-11-29: It is working great.

2009-12-26: Filled five gallon bucket with water, dumped into empty shop vacuum tank, marked five gallon level, and repeated for 10 gallon level. Any higher, the shop vacuum starts to spit out water through the filter system and performance decreases. Using this to help measure amount of water removed.

Conclusions

This is a wonderful tool to add to your cleaning routine to improve target cleaning the bare bottom, live rock, and sump area. Need to ensure you oversize the shop vacuum volume compared to the gallons you want to remove at a time as it is the limiting factor for how much you can remove before emptying. With a 16 gallon shop vacuum, I can remove up to 10 gallons before run into issues with the shop vacuum. You will also want to get a shop vacuum rated at 5.0 hp or more as performance is decreased dramatically with more hp being better.

For me, I will never use a siphon vacuum again unless I have a gravel bottom I need to clean.

DISCLAIMER: Your results may very as each system is very different from another. For my tank parameters and environment, this was my observations and conclusion. This was not a controlled experiment so there is a potential for a very large margin of error.

References

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