Right, I sort of assumed as much and that makes sense.
No I have not. I've got a wet-dry vac I got from home depot in case of a fish tank emergency, but I assume you mean something different? I'm a hardware noob so if you have a link or name of a product that would be extra helpful. I imagine it'd have to be pretty hardcore to suck up actual cypress chips, though, no?
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What kind of scoop do you use? I tried using like, a cat litter scooper and it didn't work so well.