I’ve been dealing with a lot of mulm buildup in my substrate. A normal siphon wasn’t cutting it, so I tried something different using equipment I already had.
I used my spare HOB pump as a water filtration system since I was like, hey, isn't this technically what it's for..? Anyways, the intake pulls water and debris from the tank like usual, but instead of returning the water to a bucket, it goes into the tank after running through a fine mesh bag. It also removed planaria along with the debris. Basically a nice gravel cleanup without mucking my cycle.
I’ve been doing this in sections (not the whole tank at once) to avoid crashing the cycle. Water gets cloudy from disturbed particles, but it clears quickly and fish are acting normal.
It’s basically like running a mini pond pump + vacuum system using standard aquarium gear. If you’ve got a sludge-heavy tank, this is way more effective than a basic siphon.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who did this, but I still wanted to share incase someone else struggled like I did.
Posted by Imaginary-Pool6764
4 Comments
That looks great! How did you mount the bag to the outlet so that it doesn’t get pushed out in the flow?
What’s wrong with Mulm? I add leaves to my tank to create it.
Very cool idea, thinking outside the filter, literally lol. Don’t let Tetra or Fluval see this they will market it and you will be out millions lol. Did the hose connect right to the intake ? I would think there would be a big size difference.
Never even considered this in like 20 years of fish keeping. Way to think out of the box. However, some mulm isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We just think it’s ugly/dirty.