When I had six tanks up and going, I would set aside 15 to mins every second
day to vaccum and change water.. It never took me long to do the
maintanence, and my shrubs quite enjoyed the extra water they were getting..
winter and summer.. I fill up two 7 gallon water containers and let the
water sit over night and to let it stabilize to room temp.. ( of course the
holding tanks were filled with warmer than room temp water and the tops were
left off to let the fumes of nasty chemicals disappear ).. Of course when I
get my own place and settle down I will incorperate a pair of 55g food grade
plastic drums for this purpose.. ( aprox 1m/3ft of the floor.. )

Tim..

"Bob Alston" wrote in message
news:BOAib.68433$Ms2.61164@fed1read03...
Python makes a product to aid in draining & filling. I just use gravity
when draining.

--
Bob Alston

bobalston9 AT aol DOT com
"alex crouvier" wrote in message
...

Exactly like my earlier fear of tapwater chlorine instantly killing
my fish. In fact I don't even put dechlorinator on some of my
Central American Cichlid tanks. Have we just busted a whole
section of the aquarist industry there?
And I utilised the same hose techniques as you did.
I actually place one end of the hose inside my tank,
turn on the tap and pull out the hose when the
whole length of the hose is filled w/ water. When you
pull out the hose from the tap mouth, gravity will suck
your tank water down.


"Pokey" wrote in message
t...
I'm presently using a much easier way to do the weekly water changes
in
my
tank. Instead of dealing with filling buckets of water I just use a
garden
hose siphon to take out about 50% of the water. Then I just connect
the
hose
and add the water back in. I add a couple of capfuls of dechlorinator
while
I'm adding the water. I've never done this in the past fearing that
the
chlorine would still be present and kill my fish. The water
temperature
after the addition drops from 78F to 74F but the two heaters bring it
back
up within a few hours.

It doesn't seem to affect my fish using this method and it's a whole
lot
easier than the bucket method. Anybody else use this technique?
Comments?