hey guys, its been a while.

at the moment i have 45 and a 30 gallon tanks. i do 20% changes every week. using a gravel vacuum and then filling up big boxes of water and dragging them from my bathroom to the lounge.

i then use a water drinking container to put the water back in the tank after being dechlroinated.

water goes everywhere and theres heaps of drying up to do. any ideas which could be betteR?

im thinking of buying a hose so i can turn a tap on from the outside, however the water wont be dechlorinated. im also thinking of buying a powerhead and doing reverse flow instead of using drinking containers, however its the dragging and filling whcih si the most annoying.

how do u guys do water changes???????????????????

The person who taught me to use a (never used before) garden hose to fill my Oscar tank was... my wife.

She noticed me carrying buckets around for the other, smaller tanks (10gal, 29g, 5.5g) which are doable that way -but somehow I end up splashing water around- so when I was about to put water in my six footer for the first time, for the fishless cycling, she brought me some coffee, asked me to take five.

Somehow she remembered we had this garden hose since we married (2002)- we live in a second floor apartment and have no garden; somehow she found out where it was, set it up and with that smile and looks so unique of hers she said something like: "I don't want you to hurt your back, do you think you could use this one to fill that one?".

I add the water conditioner to the tank before opening the hose. I remove old water from the hose before using it. I live in the Caribbean and I can pull this off because water tank temperature and tap water temperature are quite easily matched.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

I went to the lfs and bought a python. Its a 25' hose that screws to the kitchen focet turn the water on it creates a vaccum and sucks the old water out. turn a switch,set water temp from focet and it fills the tank.. No buckets no mess

easy way is fill a large container by hose. heat and treat water in the container then pump it into your tank. I have a small pen mark on side of my tank this shows me the 50g mark.I remove water to this mark (50g). I have a 50g container so I never remove more than I have to put back. I have a 150g tank so this is one third of my water. easy.

i use a gravity to drain my tanks into the floor drain then put the conditioner into the tank and replace the water using a python. works well for me.

yeah, its been a while etwee!
i'm back to my minimal water change so i can not
give suggestion.

on the lighter side... in some of my client, i used
hose. although our tap water is chlorinated, i fill
it directly from the faucet while vacumming the gravel.
my vacumm???? a DIY plastic bottle of softdrink 1.5 liter
size, bottom cut, attached to a hose directed to the window.
when tired already, remove the vacum and shut-off faucet.
done

hey guys thanks for the replies.

after reading ur posts i think i mite do this.

buy a hose, attach ti to the bathroom so i can put heated water in directly into the tank. and fill from there.

if i add conditioner directly into the fish tank, will that be ok ? or should the conditioner be in the water before it is added?

paul wats ur miniamal water changes now at? are u adding conditioner lol?

i do add 2 gallons every week, to compensate the
evaporation losses. but i do check my water now. i was able
to grab a set of liquid testing kit. i was able to confirm
that rooting plants in the overhead box keep my water under
check. whenever i remove the plants totally, there was always
an indication of the presence of ammonia and nitrite (base on
color charts) but whenever i put back the rooting plants, ammonia
and nitrite are gone. no i do not use any conditioner nor anti-chlorine.

one thing i have noticed, my fishes are no longer growing lenghtwise,
they are expanding sideway, becoming thicker & thicker but not longer
anymore. i feel they stop growing. but the pangasius... wow, they are
now about 20 inches long. hiting both sides of the tank when turning around.

haha man thats crazy. i cant bleive ur oscars dont have HITH. they seem healthy as.

do your oscars destroy plants? im gonna get some plants in, hopefully when i get my oscars again they wont go crazy. im loking to buy off a breeder in march.. so still a while to go.

cant wait til my oscars can become football size like urs !

You can add water to your tank as you plan. Most people do it this way. Its best to add conditioner then turn your filter off while you fill, to give conditioner time to work. once its filled turn it back on.

lucky enough, they don't have any:laugh: but mind you, they grabbed a lot of beefheart lately.
i have to feed them every other day to avoid over feeding.


by all means.... any plants i put in there, will be uprooted in just a minute.
but one thing i discovered, oscars love to stay under the floating uprooted
plants. upon seeing that, i never re-anchored
the plants until rotten.

hey marcus thanks for teh advice

i reckon what ill do is, add the conditioner first, then add the hose in and turn the filter off. it shoudl save me heaps of time and mess. just need to buy a connector to my bathroom, not sure if its possible to buy.

hey paul u reckon its possible to keep plants if i introduce plants at an early age? i have a great drift wood peice and i want to attach anubias to it.

went aquarium crawling today, oscars were by far the most liveliest fish out of every fish i saw. i put my hand over and they were jumping out biting it.

we have chosen the most fantastic fish to raise.