Water Changes

[lpiasente]

Since I have been doing so many water changes lately lugging buckets across the loungroom was becoming very messy and heavy and I was hating it. My husband rigged up a pond pump with a hose long enough to go out our lounge room window onto our fruit trees. All I have to do now is put the pump in the tank turn it on and it's all done. I do run the gravel cleaner over to remove any unwanted bits. For refill I have treated aged and heated bins out the back door. I put the pond pump in hose in the tank and turn it on. All done. The water flow is at a very steady and not a heavy flow so it doesn't upset the fish the plants or gravel. I hope this helps make water changing easier for someone else. :)

[Ghengis]

You want to get a pump that has an inlet hose fitting, as well as the outlet. Hook a hose to your garden to the outlet, and a hose connected to your gravel vac to the inlet...even more efficient! How do you go about refilling? Still lugging buckets? I hear those Python thingy's are meant to be pretty good...

[Chuckie]

Great ideas!

I am very lucky, as my husband has plumbed a pipe from my rainwater tank up to the window of the fishroom. I can attach a hose to it, with or without a trigger nozzle attachment, and fill the tanks up from right outside the window. For smal tanks I can use the trigger nozzle and for the larger ones I can just attach the gravel vac, which holds the hosepipe down in place and prevents the hose falling out and watering the carpet.

I can either siphon straight out the window or into buckets. I prefer the bukkits, so I can keep my finger over the end and stop anything I want to keep from going down 2 storeys, lol.

[lpiasente]

Lilli do you add cold water to your tanks?

Ghengis. No buckets at all. I put the pump into the bins with treated and heated water and pump it striaght into the tank.. EASY

[Chuckie]

Yep, but I add it very slowly or let it stand overnight in the room so it's same/similar temp as the tank water. I have a suspicion that something in the hot water pipes might be contributing to the tapwater problem I have :)

[lpiasente]

I was heating mine in pots No wonder it was taking such a long time.

[Chuckie]

It's a good idea, though. I wish I could heat the rainwater tank. Hmm ... LOL

[RarePets]

Sounds like some good ideas above for aqariums. I thought of as much when I cleaned our 72x24x30 inches aquarium a few weeks ago. Closest I came was working out that the hose I use from the rainwater tank (filtered and presure pump) for the shed was to short to bring the water all the way inside the house so it was the buckets and 30 minutes of carting water. Fortunately with the two Ehiem bucket filters for that aquarium water changes are not needed very often with the fish load it supports.

Things are very different for our shed and we have a 120 litre tank that we use to add minerals and hold at shed temperature untill it is used. It does require some labour at running the power lead outside to pump water in. One day I will get the electrician out to put an all weather power point on the outside of the shed. (Note that our shed is airconditioned and we only use tank heaters for the spawning tanks and growout tanks). This way jarred bettas can have water of same temp. and chemistry all the time.