Water Change Question

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
asm129 said:
The bad thing about the Python is that it relies on water pressure to suction out water. If you turn off the faucet during draining, it's very slow.

It's a lot more effectively to buy pool hosing from a pool store or sump hosing from HD and use that instead. That way you'll be draining water out of a 1 1/4" hose instead of the small hose that the Python uses. Plus you will be using gravity instead of using water pressure and wasting water with the Python.

I use this : http://m.homedepot.com/p/Flotec-Sump-Pump-Discharge-Hose-Kit-FP0012-6U-P2/100645330. You glue a 1 1/4" pvc pipe to one end and a shutoff valve to the other. Then you start the suction by sucking in air like a regular siphon. I can drain my 210 g tank in about 15 mins.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. Do you happen to have a picture of the finished product? Thanks.
 
If you wanna go cheap, then buy an inexpensive light duty garden hose from Walmart, then just use gravity to drain into toilet or out the window. To refill, with the same garden hose, you'll have to be resourceful. In my case, I use the "faucet" from my washing machine plumbing....the garden hose attaches right onto it with no additional adapters needed.
 
This is what I do with large tank WC. To start the siphon, just hook up the garden hose with the wash room faucet and fill the hose with water with the other end submerged in the tank. As soon as the hose is filled when air bubbles stop comming out of the other end, relocate the discharge end to the toilet or in the garden. To make connect and disconnect from the faucet easier, buy a quick disconnect from HomeDepot.
 
Sure, the siphon isn't lightening fast when you shut the water off with the python, but it still drains. I can do all six of my aquariums with the python inside of 45 minutes. Hey it saves my back.
 
On my diy monster I run the waterchanger off the bathroom sink and I added an elbow and 10ft run of 1/2" hose which directs the waste water to the bathtub. The extra change in altitude helps speed the siphon up. This also improved my quality of life as my wife couldnt yell at me for getting dirty fish water in "her" sink. It still takes a while to drain though so I use a submersible pump with a hose to drain my tanks.

The only drawback with the extra drain hose is that if I turn the faucet on it doesnt speed up the siphon -instead it pused water back up 35ft of hose into the tank.

And +1 on the aqueon hob's. Ive got 4 of the largest model. I love them. Mainly I can cut poly pads to fit in the blue holsters, and the motors are underwater so priming and restarting after water changes. And they are cheeeeeeeap

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Dumping dirty fish water and poop into the bathtub is not very appealing. For my big tank, I use two garden hoses which come in 3/4" to drain 100 gal in 20 min into the toilet or outside garden. No need to spend $100 for a python when you can buy a 50 ft garden hose for $20 and cut into two which drain 3 times as fast.
 
Why change water at all? Just drip into the sump, and put an overflow in there that drains into the flowerbed.
 
water will need to be aged or well water, and not every one has the cash or no how to do a drip system. I siphon my tanks out the windows or slider doors. 360 gallons a week. only use the python to fill, water bill go through the roof if i used the python to drain as it takes twice as much than you are removing to use,
 
Can anyone recommend a good pump to use for draining/refilling a 150 gal? Length of hose is about 20 feet long, height of refilling about 4 feet. Thanks.

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