2.5 gal tank

[Flashygrrl]

Small gravel vacs work great, or just stirring up the substrate with your fingers so the filter can get it. Entirely too much stress on your fish and bio-load otherwise.

[crazy4fish]

i would assume that you have plants in the tank right? if you do are they real or fake? well if they are fake then whenever you take they out to clean them you can just use a vac to clean the gravel. doing a 20-25% water change twice a week woulf probably be better than a 50% once a week but if that is all you have time for then it will work.

[tenpaull]

doing a 50% water change on a small 2.5gal tank will cause great stress as well on your bio-load. I tried this before and using my test kit, the parameters were back to day1. So in my case, It was better to do complete water changes than partial changes. It absolutely depends on what will work for you, I suggest you get a test kit and measure your parameters frequently.