CezzaXV
Fish Gatherer
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No more buckets water changes! AKA DIY Python system
Hello everyone! The brief context of this tutorial is this:I have a 60L tank which is slightly on the overstocked side, though I plan on getting a much bigger tank in the coming months. For this reason, water changes have become a big thing for me and I was desperate to find an easier method to do water changes. I had looked into a proper Python system but they seemed expensive and would not work on my taps as they're not mixers and threaded.
My inspiration for my water change system came from this thread: Click me
I found that the method in this thread didn't work for me so I have come up with a new system.
You will need:
1 x hosepipe, of an appropriate length to reach your nearest tap. I found Wilkinson to be the cheapest with a 15m one for £4.68.
4 x Female water stop - Click for eBay link
2 x Shut off valve Click for eBay link
1 x tap connector, according to the type of tap you have. More on this later.
1 x powerhead. A cheap one will be fine, though if you're planning on shifting a lot of water it may be wise to invest in a more powerful one. Here's a link to the seller I used Click for eBay link
eBay is your best bet for the powerhead, but you may want totry your local garden centre for the hose fittings before paying for postage, as they're generally much cheaper.
Additional – not essential but desirable would be some kind of trolley or reel to store the hosepipe on.
Step 1
Attach two of the female water stops to either end of the hosepipe.
Step 2
Attach the third female water stop to the outflow of the powerhead. The design of mine made it quite easy, though you may need to be clever if yours doesn't fit well. If yours has multiple outflows for aerators etc, you'll want to block these off too to allow the best flow possible.
Cautionary note – don't fall into the trap that I did. I originally tried adapting the tutorial I linked to earlier and using the power of the external filter to push water around. It didn't work – the pipe leaked and I ended up making an emergency rush to the LFS for a replacement outflow pipe. The beauty of using a submersible powerhead means that the only place this system can spring a leak is inside your tank, which is already underwater.
Note – If you are lucky enough to have a sink, drain or whatever which is below the level of the tank, you can get away without the powerhead –just siphon the water off using the magic of gravity!
Step 3
Attach the two shut off valves to either end of the hose.You can use bog standard male to male connectors, but I found that the female water stops weren't as watertight as I'd have liked them to be. The valves make for easier, leak-free storage.
Step 4
Your system is now ready to go. Place the other end of one of the valves into the connector you've added to your powerhead, then the other valve into your sink, drain, out the door or window or wherever you want your tank water to siphon off too. Submerge the powerhead, make sure both valves are open and then plug the powerhead in.
Now wait for the water to siphon. The more powerful the powerhead you bought, the quicker the water will shift. Make sure you turn the filter off and the heater too if it will end up emersed by the falling water.
Step 5
Once the water levels have dropped sufficiently, unplug the powerhead and detach it from the hosepipe. You can pack the powerhead away now– we're done with it.
Step 6
Now you need to connect the hosepipe up to the tap. At the time of writing this, the room my fish tank normally lives in is being redecorated so I am using my kitchen tap to refill while the tank is downstairs, as opposed to the bathroom tap. These are both different in design so I cantalk you through the methods involved in connecting to various different taps.
If you're lucky enough to have a threaded (one that has a spiral on it you can screw attachments onto) tap, you can buy a threaded tapconnector. Click for eBay link
If you have a mixer tap that isn't threaded then you can buyone of these which screws onto the tap to make a reasonably watertight seal. Click for eBay link This is what I have in my kitchen.
These things also exist though I found they didn't fit my tap.Click for eBay link
If you don't have a mixer tap (i.e. you have separate hot and cold taps) then it requires a bit of cleverness. You can buy a tap showerhead which will attach to both your taps. The cheapest one I found was in Argos. Click for Argos link This is what I will use when my tank moves back upstairs and I'm using mybathroom taps.
You will need to make some adjustments to this. Remove the showerhead and attach a female water stop to the pipe (meaning that you will need five of them in total) so you can attach the suckers to the taps and then the hosepipe to the rest of the pipe. I actually found that the showerhead in the Argos kit was possible to connect to a threaded tap connector – if you useit to refill you may be able to prompt your fish to breed if they're the type that breed in the rainy season (the showerhead will help simulate rain).
Step 7
Before letting any tap water back into the tank, there are two things of utmost importance. First of all, turn the filter off if you haven't done so already. We don't want to risk chlorine getting in and killing all your hard-earned bacteria! Secondly, add a big dose of dechlorinator direct to the tank, enough to dose for the whole tank, NOT just the water you're going to replace. I tend to be a bit on the paranoid side so I add even more than this. If you're not already using Seachem Prime as your dechlorinator, I highly recommend it, as it's super concentrated and works out very cheap in the long run.
Step 8
Get the water coming out of the tap to the right temperature then connect the hosepipe up so the water coming out of the tap is flowing into the tank.
Now all you have to do is wait for the tank to fill up again. There often isn't enough hot water in my house to completely refill, so I tend to lower the heater to make sure it stays submerged and keep it running while water fills up very slowly.
Et voila! Water change complete with not a bucket in sight!
To pack away, disconnect from the tap and then roll up the hosepipe, making sure the two valves on the ends of the hosepipe are now set to close.The female water stops are supposed to not let water pass if there's nothing connected to them, but I found that to not be as true as I would have liked. They were only cheap ones and I can't say whether a more reputable (but expensive) brand would work better. In any case, the valves prevent leakage.
I'm not going to kid you, this is not a quick system. It takes a good while for me to do a 50% water change on my 60L, though this would be rapidly improved with a more powerful powerhead and a willingness to put the water back in more quickly (I prefer to be cautious). Note also that you will still need to do gravel vacs and general cleaning that if usually done during a water change, if your tank requires it.
Despite this, however, my previous system involved buckets, hard work and water getting everywhere, so even though it was quicker, I much prefer this system where I just have to stand around and watch it. I even like to make myself something to eat and get my laptop out while I'm waiting for it. The total cost was around £20-25, but I think it's worth every penny. I honestly don't know how I managed without it!
If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to post here or PM me.
Hello everyone! The brief context of this tutorial is this:I have a 60L tank which is slightly on the overstocked side, though I plan on getting a much bigger tank in the coming months. For this reason, water changes have become a big thing for me and I was desperate to find an easier method to do water changes. I had looked into a proper Python system but they seemed expensive and would not work on my taps as they're not mixers and threaded.
My inspiration for my water change system came from this thread: Click me
I found that the method in this thread didn't work for me so I have come up with a new system.
You will need:
1 x hosepipe, of an appropriate length to reach your nearest tap. I found Wilkinson to be the cheapest with a 15m one for £4.68.
4 x Female water stop - Click for eBay link
2 x Shut off valve Click for eBay link
1 x tap connector, according to the type of tap you have. More on this later.
1 x powerhead. A cheap one will be fine, though if you're planning on shifting a lot of water it may be wise to invest in a more powerful one. Here's a link to the seller I used Click for eBay link
eBay is your best bet for the powerhead, but you may want totry your local garden centre for the hose fittings before paying for postage, as they're generally much cheaper.
Additional – not essential but desirable would be some kind of trolley or reel to store the hosepipe on.
Step 1
Attach two of the female water stops to either end of the hosepipe.
Step 2
Attach the third female water stop to the outflow of the powerhead. The design of mine made it quite easy, though you may need to be clever if yours doesn't fit well. If yours has multiple outflows for aerators etc, you'll want to block these off too to allow the best flow possible.
Cautionary note – don't fall into the trap that I did. I originally tried adapting the tutorial I linked to earlier and using the power of the external filter to push water around. It didn't work – the pipe leaked and I ended up making an emergency rush to the LFS for a replacement outflow pipe. The beauty of using a submersible powerhead means that the only place this system can spring a leak is inside your tank, which is already underwater.
Note – If you are lucky enough to have a sink, drain or whatever which is below the level of the tank, you can get away without the powerhead –just siphon the water off using the magic of gravity!
Step 3
Attach the two shut off valves to either end of the hose.You can use bog standard male to male connectors, but I found that the female water stops weren't as watertight as I'd have liked them to be. The valves make for easier, leak-free storage.
Step 4
Your system is now ready to go. Place the other end of one of the valves into the connector you've added to your powerhead, then the other valve into your sink, drain, out the door or window or wherever you want your tank water to siphon off too. Submerge the powerhead, make sure both valves are open and then plug the powerhead in.
Now wait for the water to siphon. The more powerful the powerhead you bought, the quicker the water will shift. Make sure you turn the filter off and the heater too if it will end up emersed by the falling water.
Step 5
Once the water levels have dropped sufficiently, unplug the powerhead and detach it from the hosepipe. You can pack the powerhead away now– we're done with it.
Step 6
Now you need to connect the hosepipe up to the tap. At the time of writing this, the room my fish tank normally lives in is being redecorated so I am using my kitchen tap to refill while the tank is downstairs, as opposed to the bathroom tap. These are both different in design so I cantalk you through the methods involved in connecting to various different taps.
If you're lucky enough to have a threaded (one that has a spiral on it you can screw attachments onto) tap, you can buy a threaded tapconnector. Click for eBay link
If you have a mixer tap that isn't threaded then you can buyone of these which screws onto the tap to make a reasonably watertight seal. Click for eBay link This is what I have in my kitchen.
These things also exist though I found they didn't fit my tap.Click for eBay link
If you don't have a mixer tap (i.e. you have separate hot and cold taps) then it requires a bit of cleverness. You can buy a tap showerhead which will attach to both your taps. The cheapest one I found was in Argos. Click for Argos link This is what I will use when my tank moves back upstairs and I'm using mybathroom taps.
You will need to make some adjustments to this. Remove the showerhead and attach a female water stop to the pipe (meaning that you will need five of them in total) so you can attach the suckers to the taps and then the hosepipe to the rest of the pipe. I actually found that the showerhead in the Argos kit was possible to connect to a threaded tap connector – if you useit to refill you may be able to prompt your fish to breed if they're the type that breed in the rainy season (the showerhead will help simulate rain).
Step 7
Before letting any tap water back into the tank, there are two things of utmost importance. First of all, turn the filter off if you haven't done so already. We don't want to risk chlorine getting in and killing all your hard-earned bacteria! Secondly, add a big dose of dechlorinator direct to the tank, enough to dose for the whole tank, NOT just the water you're going to replace. I tend to be a bit on the paranoid side so I add even more than this. If you're not already using Seachem Prime as your dechlorinator, I highly recommend it, as it's super concentrated and works out very cheap in the long run.
Step 8
Get the water coming out of the tap to the right temperature then connect the hosepipe up so the water coming out of the tap is flowing into the tank.
Now all you have to do is wait for the tank to fill up again. There often isn't enough hot water in my house to completely refill, so I tend to lower the heater to make sure it stays submerged and keep it running while water fills up very slowly.
Et voila! Water change complete with not a bucket in sight!
To pack away, disconnect from the tap and then roll up the hosepipe, making sure the two valves on the ends of the hosepipe are now set to close.The female water stops are supposed to not let water pass if there's nothing connected to them, but I found that to not be as true as I would have liked. They were only cheap ones and I can't say whether a more reputable (but expensive) brand would work better. In any case, the valves prevent leakage.
I'm not going to kid you, this is not a quick system. It takes a good while for me to do a 50% water change on my 60L, though this would be rapidly improved with a more powerful powerhead and a willingness to put the water back in more quickly (I prefer to be cautious). Note also that you will still need to do gravel vacs and general cleaning that if usually done during a water change, if your tank requires it.
Despite this, however, my previous system involved buckets, hard work and water getting everywhere, so even though it was quicker, I much prefer this system where I just have to stand around and watch it. I even like to make myself something to eat and get my laptop out while I'm waiting for it. The total cost was around £20-25, but I think it's worth every penny. I honestly don't know how I managed without it!
If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to post here or PM me.
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Using the filter 
