Am I about to do something really stupid?

[jehudson]

Hey folks ... I'm about to do a water change and noticed a nice layer of brown dusty stuff 1/8th inch thick on the bottom of my wet-dry under the bio balls. I also see some little critters (amphipods?) runnin around in it. I'm about to drain my wet-dry and clean all that muck out of there and It'll be hard to leave the critters behind. Am I about to take good stuff out of my tank?

[Ed]

Could you siphon out the 'muck' without draining the whole wet-dry? That might give the pods a fighting chance.

[jehudson]

I'll give it a whirl. I've got a siphon that hooks up to my sink ... however, my tank is so far from the sink that it doesn't suck very hard. If i'm understanding correctly, the muck is bad and needs to come out?

[Ed]

The muck is likely detritus and should come out. I use a piece of tubing about 3 feet long, submerse it in the sump to get the air out, and then let the siphon run into a bucket. This method gets the maximum amount of 'muck' with a minimum amount of water. HTH.

[Bill S]

Go for it...

[caferacermike]

I use a wet vac because it's difficult to create a suction being as that your bucket and sump are at about the same level. Gravity tends not to work well in that manner.

[jehudson]

I use a wet vac because it's difficult to create a suction being as that your bucket and sump are at about the same level. Gravity tends not to work well in that manner.

That's got to be the best use for a wet-vac that I've ever seen:)

[jroescher]

Don't worry about saving the pods. If they're in your filter, they're everywhere else too and will be right back in your filter in no time.

They are fun to pick off and feed to the fish though.