On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:59:21 +0000, Derek Lyons wrote:

Many thanks to all. I want to lift it out to clean the gravel which gets
a kind of dark green algea growing on it after six months or so.

Why not use a vacuum siphon? We vacuum our gravel as part of the weekly
water changes and haven't had any buildup at all.

Vacuuming may clean out a lot of the waste, but other than slowing the
growth it won't do anything for algae.

--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw