Water Cleaning Gadgetry

[Dark]

Does anyone have any great ideas or recommendations for a device that acts like a gravel cleaner/siphon yet does not remove the water from the tank?

I have seen some kind of electric gravel cleaner that sucks up the gravel and has a small filter on in, but i'm thinking higher volume use for when one rips all the plants out of ones tank and re-plants them. The amount of detritus and substrate stirred up makes it hard to see, and i don't fancy pulling the cannister filter apart every couple of hours in attempt to make it do the work, or waiting the hour or so that it takes for the water to settle again.

[Pies]

Not exactly... If your using a sump, you can put the end of the syphon into the sump, and then clean the gravel, and put the dirty water back into the sump, which ofcourse you run through lots of filter wool and carbon first.

Works well.

Pies

[Warren]

Get a pool pump and a big pleated cartridge filter. To clean the water up quickly you'll need a very big flow. You can cut the flow back with a ball-valve when you want to vacuum. All you have to do then is hose out the cartridge filter later...

It's what I've been doing lately and it works great! Now I only have to do a 25% water change instead of 50%. It used to take 50% to get all the vacuuming done... 8)

[jetskisteve]

the best thing i ever had for this job was a diatom filter & there's one on trademe at the mo, the one i used was a "system one" hang on jobbie.