ok, so I like the look of river rocks, but what do you do to clean the tank? take them all out and siphon the poop off the bottom?

Sometimes you will want to take them out and even wash them in old tank water. It depends on how large they are and how much of a mess may be accumulating. Don't change the filter at the same time though. You may loose your cycle.

thanks ed

I bought one of those battery powered vacs, and siphon the river rocks every few days to a week. You can just move the rocks aside when you siphon, or siphon by pushing the tube in between the rocks. Taking all of them out just to clean the bottom seems like a bit of a hassle.

I do the same as the previous post, however my syphon is manual and I just drag the end of the syphon through the rocks and sand whilst controlling the water flow by having my finger over the end of the syphon tube. Sometimes I just drag the syphon through without allowing water to flow.A bit like plowing a field! I can then also replace and level the substrata with the syphon end. After a bit of practise it becomes very easy and my Comets seem to enjoy following the syphon around and I have to be carefull not to give them the ultimate white water ride!

one of the best ways to do this involves the advice of the posters above but you use a stiff plastic section of airline tubing with a length of vinyl airline tubing slipped over one end. you wind up with what looks like a ridiculously narrow gravel vac. anyway, you can stick that small ended stiff end in between the river rocks without disturbing the rest of the goop that collects nearby (until you get to it that is). just work your way from one end of the tank to the other without pushing the rocks around to much. you wont pull too much water out because of the small amount of water flow. if you need to pull more water out when your done, just use your usual syphon.

hope this helps

Interesting. That might work handily. Is some of this tubing elastic? I'm not sure how you would attach a tiny airline tubing to a vac like that, but it definatly be helpful.

at most lfs's you can obtain lengths of stiff or ridgid airline tubing. they also have the standard, flexible, vinyl tubing too.

cut the stiff tubing to about 1.5-2 feet long (depending on how deep your tank is)

cut the flexible tubing long enough to stretch from the top of your tank to the bucket on the floor.

slip the flexible tubing over the ridgid peice so that there at least a .5 inch overlap.

and there you go! you now have the worlds skinniest vac but, its very helpful for those of you that have largish river rocks for substrate.

happy tinkering!