Sand Depth & Egg Crate

[Sixo]

Managed to find a 5kg bag of the Barlows sand on eBay that should do it hopefully.

[LookoutTrout]

After rinsing several buckets in the past I'd be tempted next time to do it with an empty aquarium. Fill it up, tip all the sand in, stir it and syphon all the water back out.

[fr499y]

the easy way to do it with minimal clouding is to fill a drinks bottle with sand, turn it upside down in the tank to empty it and the dirty water goes into the bottle.

Like this:

[Sixo]

I might give the bottle method a go, YouTube videos always make it look fairly simple.

I’ll no doubt add all the sand in and it’ll still be a bit murky, will do a big siphon in needed. I’m sure it’ll be lovely when it’s all done.

Pretty anxious about spilling large amounts of sand/water as we’re getting a new floor put down beforehand.

I’m doing a bit of reading-up on these Pythons to see if they live up to the hype (and price).

[fr499y]

Pretty anxious about spilling large amounts of sand/water as we’re getting a new floor put down beforehand.

Towels and plenty of them.

Do the bottle lid up before turning it the right way and lifting out and you won't have much (if any) cloudy water.

[LookoutTrout]

I’m doing a bit of reading-up on these Pythons to see if they live up to the hype (and price).

I thought they were a bit spendy (and American, don't assume it will fit European taps) so use a garden hose with a gravel vac one end and ebay fittings the other. I have spilt a lot less water this way than when I used to use buckets.

[Andys temperate tank]

I tried a python off ebay. I couldn't even get a fitting that made it fit my tap.

Here's how I change my water. There's other ideas in there as well.

https://www.aquariumforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=7373

[SPACKlick]

I'm currently using something like this electric gravel cleaner. The hose it comes with connects to my main, garden type, hose and I can just pump water out, or I can use the internal sock to just clean stuff without changing water. It's not sgnificantly faster than just siphoning but the long handle keeps my hands drier.

Then I use one of these hozelock clips (or this one if your tap is different) to connect the hose to the tap to run the water back to the tank.

[Sixo]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

I’ve always used buckets on my smaller tanks but I think I’m going to have to evolve a bit moving to larger volumes.

Definitely going to siphon out directly to a drain to in my back garden such a simple, hassle-free idea I hadn’t even considered.

I’m getting a new kitchen fitted at same time as the new floor so will see what the new tap fittings are like for how I go about refilling, pump in a bucket is a decent idea though, trying to fiddle about with mixer taps to get temperature/pressure right, turning off, then screwing on attachments to refill has a little bit of faff to it, nothing major though.

It’s just trying to get all the inlets/diffusers/hooks/pumps and tap fittings compatible (and reliable) I can see why people get drawn to the all-in-one systems.

[LookoutTrout]

When I bought my tank the kitchen tap we had was a few decades old and useless for connecting to, when choosing a replacement it was difficult finding out if it would be suitable for water changes. We bought one like this with a removable diffuser and I think they are all a standard size, it fits the cheap hose adaptor I bought on eBay but I don't think it works with Python.


I can't tell you what thread it is as neither the tap nor the adaptor included details.

For temperature I use an IR thermometer as it's quick, for flow I tried being gentle but the combi boiler would cut out so now I just whack it right open.