Hose for siphoning

[Jhhnn]

OK i agree that the Python is junk. There is alot of cheap plastic that breaks easily. I like those from Jehmco as i need to speed up my change of water. I have a 55 gal and a 26 gal and takes me an 1 hour a night to change the water. With the Jehmco's how do you pick up all the debris?

You need to siphon off debris first or during the process of draining. That's tough in tanks other than bare bottom. One of Carol's sticky threads somewhere describes how to make it easier in BB tanks, using normal water flow patterns from canister filters to herd the poop into a smaller area... it works.

[traversediscus]

You need to siphon off debris first or during the process of draining. That's tough in tanks other than bare bottom. One of Carol's sticky threads somewhere describes how to make it easier in BB tanks, using normal water flow patterns from canister filters to herd the poop into a smaller area... it works.

Anybody know where i can find the link to Carols theory?

[traversediscus]

Could i use an external water pump? attach a hose on either end? would the waste get stuck in the pump?

[yim11]

Could i use an external water pump? attach a hose on either end? would the waste get stuck in the pump?

I've tried that, HUGE hassle since you have to keep the pump primed, and in my case I couldn't leave a hose full of water across the floor all the time, so that never worked for me. Keeping the pump primed was a LOT more hassle than I thought it would be.

HTHs,
-jim

[rickztahone]

i just use a regular ol' vinyl hose. i use to gravity drain directly to my backyard but we remodeled the house and it is now too far to do that. so i dump the water into a roll-away container and then drain that onto the backyard. sounds like a hassle but it's better than the bucket brigade.

[traversediscus]

I live on the 2nd floor of an apartment so I don't have that luxury. I did look for a drain pipe a while ago to tap into but no such luck

[Jhhnn]

Anybody know where i can find the link to Carols theory?

I apologize for that bit of a misdirection. The thread that inspired my own method is "the ease of cleaning barebottom tanks" in the discus basics for beginners section. It actually refers to using aquaclear hob filters, and isn't terribly specific.

In my 120gal tank, I have the discharge u tube from the Cascade 1200 pointed straight down in the back lefthand corner of the tank. The tube extents a couple of inches below the waterline. The prefilter sponge on the intake is up high in the other corner. The discharge flow follows the angle down, spreads out smoothly when it comes to the bottom corner, creating a laminar flow across the bottom. The only things in the way are sponge filter bases, because the heaters are suction cupped near horizontally to the back wall near the tank bottom.

Debris accumulates on the bottom righthand quarter of the tank to be siphoned away with one of these-

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1...atalogId=10053

The suction and discharge tubes have been extended to accomodate the tank depth and distance to the drain... I occasionally use a long handled plastic scraper on the tank bottom to remove the biofilm.

I hope that's clear...

[traversediscus]

I apologize for that bit of a misdirection. The thread that inspired my own method is "the ease of cleaning barebottom tanks" in the discus basics for beginners section. It actually refers to using aquaclear hob filters, and isn't terribly specific.

In my 120gal tank, I have the discharge u tube from the Cascade 1200 pointed straight down in the back lefthand corner of the tank. The tube extents a couple of inches below the waterline. The prefilter sponge on the intake is up high in the other corner. The discharge flow follows the angle down, spreads out smoothly when it comes to the bottom corner, creating a laminar flow across the bottom. The only things in the way are sponge filter bases, because the heaters are suction cupped near horizontally to the back wall near the tank bottom.

Debris accumulates on the bottom righthand quarter of the tank to be siphoned away with one of these-

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1...atalogId=10053

The suction and discharge tubes have been extended to accomodate the tank depth and distance to the drain... I occasionally use a long handled plastic scraper on the tank bottom to remove the biofilm.

I hope that's clear...

Thanks for your ideas. Any chance of some photos?

[tcyiu]

I think every situation will be different enough (different size tanks, different outflow from filters, different decorations ...) that at the end of the day, it will require your experimenting to get to the right solution.

For example, I have two BB tanks, one 10 gal hospital tank, and one 40 gal growout tank. On the hospital tank, the overflow from the HOB filter is on the left hand side. The water current flows and creates a vortex on the right. So the poop accumulates in the middle of the right hand side.

On the grow out tank, the outflow from the canister goes to a spray bar on the right hand side. The intake is on the left. I would have expected the poop to accumulate on the left. But no. Somehow, the water current is such that the poop mostly accumulates on the right edge. Curious but true.

The upshot is, play around with it. If you're handy, get miscellaneous bits of plastic and fool around with directing the water flow.

Tim

[Jhhnn]

Like tcyiu says, play around with it. I've done the best with the really simple method described above, creating flow across the bottom, pushing the poop into a pile at one end. Other ways may work better in different setups...

I've been promising to post a pictorial of my whole water changing setup... I'll try to get that up over the weekend. It's not pretty, but it works great...