How to Do Semi-Automatic Water Changes?

Hi,

I'm looking to create a semi-automatic system for doing water changes on my freshwater tank.

i own laundry faucets and drainage nearby and would like to utilize two hoses from there going into my cistern. one hose would fill the tank while the other would drain the tank at equal time.

how could i make this work so that the flow in and out of the tank be equal. i thought of two pumps working in opposite directions but i don't know how accurate that will be. anyone have a join to device that handle this ?

any ideas would be appreciated...

thanks!
get a gravel pump that's big and when its time to clean it release all of the crap and food its gotten into a container and meaningless the container and then you dont have to do much
Lethargic Fish..Flukes or Swim Bladder disease?
just go out a buy a power head pump that you newly have to conect to the hoes in the water and i should suck the hose out and then put the other hose in the tank to compress it
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Whoever gave Gary a thumbs down is clueless. Drilling is the road to go, if your tank have a tempered bottom, as many larger tanks do, you can drill the side. I enjoy 16 of my tanks set up this way, with several more to travel.

Jehmco sells the drill bits, bulkhead fittings, everything you need to make this work; http://www.jehmco.com/

I enjoy some work in progress pics, as well as drain setup pics. I'm knocking out a 50% marine change on five 40 gallon tanks in in good health under a half hour. 29's & 20's take a few minutes per container.

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/9730/...
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/633/t...
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/7827/...
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/3958/11...
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/6756/...
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/2951/...
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/273/116...

If you are dealing with only one tank you can tough plumb in the water feed, this is where on earth my fishroom is headed. A 3/4" overflow will pull about 4 gallons per minute 1" will manipulate 6gpm.

Pm or e-mail me or whatever this site does if you have any more question.
How do i seize rid of the...
No need for pumps. syphon power should be worthy enough. Unless where you are draining the water to is sophisticated then the tank. You can always run a hose external and let if drain that way.

What I do is I attached my gravel vacuum to my hose near a female hose adaptor and shut off valve. Then I run the hose to the Tub that we don't use. I lately drain the water that way it works great.

Once I am done with that I get an adaptor for my bathroom sink so I can just hook the hose right up to the sink. Run the water thought get the right temp. I append the amount of water treatment I need to the tank after I let the hose fill it up.

It works great. Kind of like the Python but custom for my desires.

Here is a site that shows you every thing you need to make a python of your own.
http://www.aquariumlife.net/projects/diy...

Yeah its the passageway to go. No more buckets for me I don't know why I waited so long to do this.

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Answers:    The most usual instrument to do this is by installing a "standpipe" on the tank. The tank is drilled on the bottom, a "bulkhead" is fitted into the hole thus created, and a PVC pipe is placed contained by the bulkhead. The PVC pipe stands up in the tank to the desired water rise, with a screen or prefilter at the top of the pipe so fish won't go down the pipe. On the bottom side, the bulkhead is connected to a pipe or hose prime to any drain that is lower than the bottom of the tank. Then you can just add on water at will (with a hose from your faucet), and the extra volume of water will progress down the pipe.

This may be hard to visualize from my description, but if you look around on the Web you will find some plans for "do-it-yourself" wet change systems like this. Old issues of "Freshwater and Marine Aquarium" magazine also have profoundly of instructions for this sort of thing.

(Later)
Yes, you could definitely use an overflow box instead of drilling the container. I think the main reason ethnic group with a lot of tanks don't generally do that is that overflow boxes are more expensive, and they take up more space on the outside of the reservoir.
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Snowflake, I don't think she's looking at this just for cleaning the tank, she desires water replacement, so any ammonia or nitrate gets flushed out and it's not something she has to do herself.

Gary C's view would work best, but if you do this, you'd need a valve on the smudge coming into the tank so it feeds the new river real slow if you wanted the system to run full time. nearby are timers for garden hoses you could add if you only required to change a little bit at a time once or twice a day. I'm thinking you enjoy city water, not a well, so that means there's chlorine within the water. you can't have the water coming within so fast that the chlorine kills your fish. if your cistern is something like 200-300 gallons, you wouldn't want more than 1-2 gallons per hour of new water coming within so the chlorine could evaporate. the beauty of a system like this is that the overflow lets antiquated water out as new water comes within. but you have to make sure whether you have plants in the tank that leaves and fish food don't clog up the overflow or the cistern will overflow.

another thing about these, these aren't a way of getting out of cleaning a container each week. the water movement is too slow to flush out all the stuff you'd verbs out with a siphon. you'd still need a filter and maybe some powerheads, after stir up the gravel so it got flushed out through the overflow, and you still have to scrape the container sides.

Here's one of the simplest designs I saw online, but it uses a 60$ filter to remove the chlorine. you'd have to replace that every so often if you used one of those.

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/di...


EDIT using 2 pumps next to different flows is asking for a disaster at some point, this will either end within your tank flooding if too much water comes contained by or going dry if too much water goes out. thats why the overflow from a standpipe or gap drilled in the back works best. if the river level rises above the pipe, water automatically drains and if it go below the pipe it stops draining. an overflow box could work to keep it from overflowing, but if the level drops, I don't know that it starts draining again whether the water goes back up. I presume you need to start the suction on these like a siphon, the water isn't going to flow up over the top of the reservoir by itself
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