Looking for ideas for a home made power dirt picker upper. What I mean is a filter somewhat like a Diatom filter but with a fiberglass or foam filter instead. I was thinking of taking a hang on power filter and adding a flexible hose to the intake so I can temporally hang it on the side of the tank to vacuum dirt from the tank with out losing any water. Has anyone done this and how did you do it?

I looked on the Internet at those hand held ones with a bag and none of them looked like they would be powerful enough to do the job.

DLH

Why would you want to vac the substrate without removing water?
You are doing regular water changes right?

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150G, 1 shovelnose sturgeon 8", 1 polypterus endilicheri 9", 1 leopard ctenapoma 4", 1 Distichodus Sexfasciatus 6", 1 Farlowella acus algae eater 8", 2 silver dollars, 2 tank bred angelfish, 1 clown knife 11", 1 Jaguar hybrid syntadonis 4", 6 African cichlids 3+"

Sorry I didn't answer right away I've been off line for a while. Even though we siphon the dirt off the bottom when we change the water we never seem to get it all. I don’t want to clean the gravel itself put pick up the poop setting on top of the gravel. Especially that of my 11 inch Pleco. I know they have ones with hand pumps and ones with motors ( $110 at my lfs), I just would like to build a better mouse trap.

I picked up a 100 gph pump at the lfs that was marked down from $60 to $30 then to $15 because it had a slight crack in the non-functional part of the housing. I played around with the pump and it moves more than enough water for my needs. I’m going to look for something to use as a filter on the intake side of the pump. Maybe I can adapt one of those filters that sit on the bottom of the tank. I’ll then rig the whole thing to hang in the water on the side of my tank with as flexible a hose as I can find for the intake.

DLH

I was thinking about this myself. But more like a roomba type of thing. something that could skim the bottom for poo like a pool vaccum.... still working on ideas....