How do you change your water

rsn48

I know this sounds pretty basic but I'm looking for the "easiest" way to change water - so how do you do it.

1. How do you keep your water "stored" until you use it?
2. When or do you treat it before it goes into the aquarium?
3. How do you get it up to temperature?
4. How do you drain the old stuff off without getting bored while the bucket fills up and spills over?
5. What equipment do you use?

Lupin

1. I don't. The new water is straight from the tap.

2. My tapwater does not have chlorine and chloramine. I do have Prime with me and put it on buckets in cases where chlorine has been added in the tap before pouring into the tank.

3. I have no issues with that. You could use boiling or cold water and measure with thermometer to evenly match the temp.

4. Hose and pump. I surf the internet while I am waiting. Had a tank overflow incident by as much as 120% though last month. My fish remained in the tank fortunately.

5. Pump, hose and buckets.

iamntbatman

In my pipes and hot water heater, I suppose.

As it's city water, I treat it with a water conditioner that removes chlorine, chloramine and heavy metals before putting it in my water. I like Prime as it does all of these and takes very little to treat a whole lot of water. I treat it and add it to the tank immediately.

I take a plastic cup and scoop out some water from the tank and put this next to the sink. I put one hand in the cup and another under the running tap and adjust the temperature of the water coming out of the tap until they feel the same. I can usually get the water to about 1 degree of the tank water (I'm not a superhero; most people have this degree of relative temperature sensitivity).

Well I almost always vacuum the gravel while I'm removing water so I'm busy the whole time.

A couple of buckets, a standard gravel vac and this hand pump thing. It's basically a rubber/plastic squeeze ball with hard plastic fittings at the openings to attach a hose. One of the fittings has a simple valve. I connect this to the bucket end of the gravel vac hose and give it a few pumps until I get a good siphon going.

Jill0

1. How do you keep your water "stored" until you use it?
I use it straight from the tap.

2. When or do you treat it before it goes into the aquarium?
I used to treat it by just adding the conditioner to the tank as it was filling up. I do not treat it anymore, though. We keep "Prime" on hand, but have a deep, good well. Basically like spring water and have found the fish do well w/o any conditioner being added.

3. How do you get it up to temperature?
This may not be good advice, but I just really do it by feel.

4. How do you drain the old stuff off without getting bored while the bucket fills up and spills over?
Oh no... no buckets here. I use a Python to fill it and to do part of the draining. I also rigged up 50' of clear vinyl tube to a gravel vac (cheap one) with a pump. It has a tapered end that is made to go into a bucket, however, I jammed it into the end of the 50' clearn vinyl tube and let it drain into the yard. I rigged this up because the python drains fairly slow (compared to this) and I didn't really want all that water going into our drainfield when there was an alternative.

5. What equipment do you use?
Just the python to do a little draining and all of the filling and the gravel vac / vinyl tubing I rigged up to drain.

Angel079

I use mine right from the tap, temp comparison by hand, into buckets with water conditioner, let that sit there for a lil while while I gravel vac the tanks and the I add it to the tank.
I do have one of these Phyton (sp?) machines here, just don't use it, I go it the old fashion way with gravel vac & buckets
Then the old tank water goes towards my plants, they love the extra liquid bio fish ferts

Byron

I use a version of what's been mentioned. Python/Aequeon hose attached to the faucet that drains the tank as I vacuum the substrate, clean the glass, trim the plants. To re-fill, I adjust temp by hand with a container of tank water beside the faucet, run the water into the tank direct, squirt the conditioner into the tank as it starts. Check the temp of the water entering the tank periodically, as the hot tends to decrease very slightly the longer it runs, and I do 50%+ water changes which is a lot of water in a 115g aquarium.

Byron.

MrBishop

for question number 5, i use a hose and a bucket. suck 1 end of the hose for about 1-2 seconds (before water gets in your mouth) and then hold the hose lower than the tank and it pushes through! FAST! it takes about 20- 25 seconds to fill up 1 bucket, when its full pull the hose out, empty bucket and do it again.

JOB DONE!

Kelso

The only thing I do different than all these guys is instead of buckets, I use coolers. Lids are awesome. ;)

stephanieleah

1,2,3. I use five gallon bottles that you store drinking water in. I fill them up in the bathtub, add conditioner to the bottles, check the temp periodically as the bottles fill (with thermometer but I'm going to try it by hand next time). I store it there during the wc then bring it out to the room when i need it.

4,5. I vaccuum the gravel the entire time, so I don't get bored. But it's only a 29 gallon tank so that's just 10-12 gallons each wc.
5. gravel vac (just a tube with a wider attachment at the end, i syphon it by hand), a five gallon bucket for waste water (dump it down toilet) and two five gallon bottles for new water.

TOTAL TIME: 20-25 minutes. Twice a week. = happy fish.

MrBishop

total time for me 6-7 mins! with a 65gal.

the trick with mine is i dont have to move more than 3 feet away from the fish tank at all times