Undergravel Filters
Paula, There are pro’s and con’s to the benefits/drawbacks of undergravel filters, and while they can do a good job, their use is often disuaded by the more experienced aquarists. When you ask “how do you actually clean these things?”, these things (the filter medium itself) are actually the substrate which is filtering out your water; the undergravel filters themselves are merely the instruments which pulls the water through the substrate, they don’t actually “filter” the water.
Since it can be difficult at times making sure you get all the debris cleaned from your substrate (especially since you can’t see it to know you’re getting to it), these filters are known to induce varying degrees of acidic water (sometimes detrimentally so) in varying time- frames (sometimes quite fast) as a natural process of organic matter being broken down. The rate if this of course would be due to how much organic debris is left behind. One must maintain a rigid and thorough regimen of cleaning the substrate along with proper PWC’s.
There are various designs of gravel cleaning equipment, some hand operated and some battery operated, of different efficiencies. Not having used a Python, and as a result possibly being wrong on this, I would think that if the faucet flow were to be kept low that this piece should do as well a job with the substrate of a 2 or 3 gallon tank as it would do for your 29 or 55 gallon tanks, without emptying these small tanks too fast (unless a certain minimum flow rate is needed). Python gravel cleaner attachments are still one of the best maintenance apparati available to the hobbyist, albeit its unfortunate waste of clean water necessary to operated it. Ray
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