Pressure Washer Cleaning Aquarium Tank

Most pressure washers aren't intended to draw water through the intake, but are intended to use pressurized feedwater, however, you can do what you're thinking about with an injector attached to the outlet side. This acts as a vacuum.

But I believe you're over thinking it. A simple siphon hose should provide all of the suction you need to clean the bottom of a fish tank. Discharge into a 5 gallon bucket. The lower the bucket from the tank, the more suction you will have.

High pressure cleaner pumps are often piston pumps. Beware for any impurities like particles. Bad idea. Just use a regular pump with strainer filter.

Could you explain in more detail just what you want to do?

If you can put the fish into a separate temporary tank, then you can drain the aquarium by siphoning or other simple means, wash it however you wish, refill, and reinsert fish.

However, someone might be able to invent a scheme with a high pressure nozzle surrounded by a suction ring. The nozzle could blow off debris from the tank bottom, and the suction ring would collect it for disposal. Such a device could be traversed over the bottom of the tank without disturbing the fish very much, or at all.

I have done something similar to what you are proposing for many years. I have a small "drill" type pump which I use to suction out my aquarium. Suction tube goes in the tank, feeds the drill pump, outlet tube goes to a filter housing with a washed coarse grade string filter in it, tube from filter goes back into the aquarium with the cleaner water. It works fine if you change the filter after each use and don't let the tank get extremely dirty because the filter will overload before you are finished. Sure is hard to replace the wet and dirty filter over the wife's rug! This is all done with the fish in the tank. Cost me about $3.00 a use buying the filters at the big box. Make sure you rinse the system well with water before using to get any loose fibers off the string filter. Also rinse it with clean water after each use.

My personal thoughts about using a pressure washer are that is the wrong direction to go. You want to have as little force as possible in order not to disturb the fish or the debris until you are ready to suction the debris out. A small layer of debris on the bottom/sides is much easier and faster to remove than filtering all the water after you have disturbed the debris and placed it in suspension in the water.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Oy

aquarium siphon gravel cleaner

I have one of these and it works quite well sucking the muck but leaving the gravel. I just empty into a bucket with old towel as filter and then dump the bucket back into the tank.

If you have a really big tank you might consider a LARGE bucket with a sump pump to return the filtered water and a larger version sucker. My unit has a one way valve to make it really easy to prime.

I agree with the use of a siphon hose with possibly some kind of screen on the bottom to avoid sucking up gravel. Using a squeege to clean the glass first is a great idea, just let the tank settle before siphoning up the bottom. The re-use of the water you siphon out is a great idea. Some of your water should be discarded, however, because evaporation will tend to concentrate the minerals in the water. It is my understanding that you should never replace more than 25% of your water at a time. And of course, use some method of removing the chlorine from the new water.

I would point out that while you are cleaning out the gunk, you are also removing the bacteria that break down the fish waste into less harmfull substances, so don't go overboard with the cleaning. After all, one of the reasons for the gravel on the bottom is to provide surface area for the bacteria to grow and thrive.

Use a good length of 1/2 plastic hose. Put the whole hose in the water and let it fill. Draw out one end with your thumb to seal it to a bucket to start a siphon. Use the other end to remove the waste. That easy.

The one I have makes ~16:1 cross section enlargement between the siphon hose and the tube lifting the muck out of the gravel. This provides good suction with low velocity to keep the gravel from getting sucked up out of the tank but the gunk does. The large diameter section length ratio should be ~72 or if your hose is 1/4" id the 4" id section should be ~18" to ensure the gravel does not get sucked up the hose. Then you do not need a screen that will get clogged with gunk.

I have a different solution for you. I raised fish for the pet industry for quite a few years and came up with not using the gravel bottom as a sediment trap. Reverse the flow so water goes down the former up tubes and then out under the gravel and then out thru the rocks. the rocks still grow bacteria to deal with the biomass but no longer trap sediment. Your intakes to pushing water under the gravel will need to be filtered (sponge filters work great) and your circulation system will also need to be filtered, which you should already be doing. It is a lot easier and much quicker to clean the filters than clean the rocks. I just put a plastic bag over the filter on the "down tubes" and then turn it off trapping all in the bag. I then remove the sponge filters and clean them. This is much faster and actually keeps the tank a lot healthier. I was doing 300+ 55 gallon tanks so faster for me was much better. A few species of fish have fry that are weak swimmers and they will tend to get stuck on the filters. they clean off well and are uninjured. You just have to watch for them. Discus's are one of the ones to watch out for. these same species would lose fry to the rock bottom in the past so this is an improvement. As a bonus. food that used to get trapped in the rocks stays available stuck in plain site on the sponge filters. The less aggressive fish in a tank will get fed this way.

If you do this to an established tank expect the water to turn brown for a while until you get all the stuff trapped under the gravel support cleaned out. You don't remove this using the vacuum/siphon method. It can built up for years so if you have a well established tank it would be better to disassembly and clean before changing it over.

stay away from concrete for your fish tank. It will make the water more alkaline and harder. water quality in fish tanks is more critical than most think. The bacteria does not fix all. It can not remove built up dissolved solids. You still need to do water removal and replacement on a regular basis. I found that replacing 50% of the water in a month worked well. I wanted my fish to thrive, not just survive. The removed water is great for gardens.