question re: dirty water bucket/clean water bucket

[gale]

I mentioned here that I don't have room to store a bucket for each tank and was told I only need 2. One for dirty water and one for clean and nothing could ever get transferred from one tank to another. So I marked my existing bucket dirty and got a new one for clean and it's been working out dandy. Now my question-I was thinking last night as I was trying to fall asleep. What about when you rinse your filter media in old tank water? If you rinse it in the dirty bucket, you risk germs from another tank that has been drained into the bucket previously. If you rinse it in the clean bucket you risk getting germs from your filter media in a different tank.

The only 2 solutions I could think of is to rinse over the dirty bucket while siphoning with the water running out the siphon (which would pretty much require growing a 3rd arm) or to cut the bottom off of a gallon water jug, use that, and then throw it away. Or save it only for that tank. What do you do?

 

[ioNightShade]

I only use one bucket for everything. Just wondering, what germs are going to come out of the dirty water, into the dirty bucket, that will not be found, in mass quantities, in the tank itself?

With this method, you might be able to hold onto a clean, "germ-free" bucket, the same will not be true for your tank.

Tank >>>> clean bucket.

Maybe something wrong with my logic. If so, please correct me.

Confused,

JT

 

[BobK]

Same here, I only use one bucket for all three of my tanks. For instance yesterday I siphoned off 15 gallons from my 75G tank, rinsed the filter cartridges in the water and then dumped the water. I rinsed out the bucket with tap water, added dechlorinator, added water, and then poured it in my tank. When I was finished I repeated the process with my 5 gallon tank. Now if I had some kind of illness in my 75G tank I would have thoroughly washed the bucket with tap water and let it dry completly overnight before using it on another tank. Alternatively, I could have used it on another tank and just avoided rinsing the cartridges. I have the room but I don't want to have buckets lying around. My wife probably wouldn't like it anyway!

 

[gale]

I only use one bucket for everything. Just wondering, what germs are going to come out of the dirty water, into the dirty bucket, that will not be found, in mass quantities, in the tank itself?

With this method, you might be able to hold onto a clean, "germ-free" bucket, the same will not be true for your tank.

Tank >>>> clean bucket.

Maybe something wrong with my logic. If so, please correct me.

Confused,

JT

My original concern was germs from my 10g which had newly bought fish in it (aka quarantine tank at the time) having any unknown disease from the new fish getting into my big tank. I'll try to find the original thread but a lot of people here recommend separate nets, gravel vacs, etc for each tank so as not to spread any disease from one tank to another.

As for rinsing and drying, I thought there were some things that were said to be able to survive even in dry conditions (spores, etc).

 

[gale]

Here's the thread but it didn't get many replies. Anyway mainly I was worried about disease/germs from my brand new fish infecting my old fish.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=68763&hl=