Water change system to connect tanks to??

[aussieman57]

OK. So I am planning on converting my garage to a dedicated fishroom. It will be insulated & utilize a split mini to AC/heat as needed. Would like to create a gravity drain system for all the tanks on the racks to drain water from the tanks for water changes & fill tanks via another line of piping. Not interested in doing a drip system and would prefer to say drain 30% of the tank volume through a drain pipe and then fill tanks within a few minutes. I would add SAFE to each individual tank prior to adding my city water. Anyone have any ideas or have you built something similar to this. Hope I explained it so it makes sense. I have no floor drain so I would pipe waste water to the yard.

 

[Midwater]

Not interested in doing a drip system

That's me out then.

 

[fishguy1978]

Add a bulkhead to the side of each tank at the level to which you want to drain with a valve on the outside.

 

[aussieman57]

Add a bulkhead to the side of each tank at the level to which you want to drain with a valve on the outside.

Great idea thanks.

 

[fishguy1978]

Great idea thanks.

You could go as small as a 1/2in depending on size of the tanks.

 

[jjohnwm]

I suspect you will find that gravity won't give you a fast enough draining action to get the job done in the few minutes you want to allow for it. Plus, if you want to deliver the water to a location that is more than just a few feet away, the slope you will need to build in will become an obstacle. You'll likely need to add a number of breathers to the system to keep it flowing well, and the size of pipe required will be cumbersome. Whichever size you go with, you'll have to make sure that the outflow, as well as the tops of the breathers, are well caged off to keep pests out of the works.

My setup has all the drain lines plumbed to a manifold which is directly attached to a pump that drains the water outside. Individual valves control which tank or tanks are drained. No breathers required, smaller pipe can be used. Bulkheads with inside threads are in the sides of all tanks, near the bottom but high enough that the tanks can't drain all the way and kill my fish if I get busy on something else and lose track. A 90-elbow threaded into the bulkhead can be pointed upward with a length of PVC pipe of an appropriate length to stop the water draining at whatever level you desire...or can be pointed downward with a short piece of pipe that extends right to the bottom, allowing you to drain all the way if required.

 

[duanes]

In the states, I ran 2" PVC line along the floor to PVC lines to the garden.
All I had to do was close a valve to a sump, and water would flow outside instead.
Pumps were never turned off, continuing to cycle water throughout until the sump volume dropped to pump intakes., the valve was then either closed to the outside, or another sump was drained.

.
My sumps are usually run almost full, so I could lose 50-75 gallons off each in about 5 minutes, then close the line to another sump (sending old water from it to the same drain line) and start sending tap water to the first sump that was now drained.
In this way (with 4 sumps) 12 or more tanks could have a significant amount of water changes in about 15 minutes by gravity, while at the same time watering the garden. When the garden was already wet, old water could be sent to a rain barrels that fed a heavily planted pond.

My biggest problem was forgetting which sump I was filling, and overflow on the floor.
I used a separate line to finger gauge temp, which also gradually rinsed new PFS
substrate

These days I use and emergency overflow that directs water somewhere else if I forget, or it cover swhen rain water overwhelms the system.

 

[aussieman57]

I suspect you will find that gravity won't give you a fast enough draining action to get the job done in the few minutes you want to allow for it. Plus, if you want to deliver the water to a location that is more than just a few feet away, the slope you will need to build in will become an obstacle. You'll likely need to add a number of breathers to the system to keep it flowing well, and the size of pipe required will be cumbersome. Whichever size you go with, you'll have to make sure that the outflow, as well as the tops of the breathers, are well caged off to keep pests out of the works.

My setup has all the drain lines plumbed to a manifold which is directly attached to a pump that drains the water outside. Individual valves control which tank or tanks are drained. No breathers required, smaller pipe can be used. Bulkheads with inside threads are in the sides of all tanks, near the bottom but high enough that the tanks can't drain all the way and kill my fish if I get busy on something else and lose track. A 90-elbow threaded into the bulkhead can be pointed upward with a length of PVC pipe of an appropriate length to stop the water draining at whatever level you desire...or can be pointed downward with a short piece of pipe that extends right to the bottom, allowing you to drain all the way if required.

John do you have pics of your setup?

 

[jjohnwm]

John do you have pics of your setup?

I tried to take a few today; can't really get a pic of system as a whole because it stretches the length of the house, much of it under the crawlspace, and much more a writhing mass of hoses under and behind stands and other stuff in the basement, and now extending up through carefully drilled and concealed holes in the floor to service a couple of upstairs tanks. Warning: my DIY plumbing is not the kind seen in many MFK threads. No carefully assembled straight lines of colour-coded PVC, no blinking LED's on NASA-type control panels, nothing purchased that I couldn't make myself, unconcerned with cosmetics. I am not impressed by "clean" installations worthy of photospreads in Popular Mechanics magazine; I'm more of the Gilligan's Island make-it-however-you-can school of thought.

Here's a few bulkheads installed into plywood tanks, glass tanks and also a poly stock tank. Yes, those are plain ordinary threaded exterior faucets screwed into the inside-threaded bulkheads, with plain ordinary garden hose attached to carry the drain water away.


Here's a pic showing the inside of the bulkhead in a just-drained plywood tank. The bulkhead has a threaded 90 elbow threaded into it, with a short piece of poly hose attached. By pointing this downward like this, I can drain all the water out down to less than a 1/4-inch. By turning the 90 upwards, I can vary the depth I drain to buy changing the length of poly hose. Most of the time, I simply have a strainer screwed in to prevent fish and snails from making their way into the fitting during normal water changes.


Here's a pic of the manifold/pump assembly. This manifold has 4 hoses individually controlled, running to various tanks and/or groups of tanks. The four yellow levers control which hose is draining; most of the hoses have branches in the field, and the faucets on each individual tank determine which tank(s) are being drained. The pump is just a cheapo Princess Auto special, noisier than hell so you don't ever forget that it's running. Hard to see in this pic, but the exhaust from the pump is fitted with a two-way Y-fixture, with a selector lever that determines which of the two hoses at the top has the waste water pumped into it. One of the hoses feeds into the

 

[jjohnwm]

Sorry, got an error message and couldn't complete that last post. Here's the manifold/pump assembly, showing the four incoming lines and two outgoing ones. One of those feeds in the drain pipe from my basement floor sump, which is used throughout the warm months and pondexhausts the water into a pasture adjacent to my yard. The other feeds an exterior faucet that lets me use the water for gardening, topping up my pond, etc. It also lets me use a hose to carry the exhaust water to that pasture during the frozen winter months, when the buried drain line is not usable. That means taking a hose outside and laying it out immediately before a water change, and then picking it up, draining it, coiling it up and bringing it back inside immediately afterwards. PITA, the only thing I really hate about my system.




Here's the connection between the exhaust from the pump/manifold and the floor sump drain pipe.


This individual system has been working well for a bit over ten years in this home. The design itself is one I have been using for about 30 years with complete satisfaction. If it wasn't for the cold weather water handling problem, it would be perfect for me. It would be great in a warmer climate, or for anybody on a municipal sewer system that doesn't need to worry about getting rid of the water and can just send it down the drain.