The Puffer Forum

In the past I've never had to think about vacuuming the substrate separately to water changes because I have always used buckets and a siphon gravel vac. Now that I pump my changes I'm still using one bucket to vacuum the substrate while I have a pump pumping the water out.

how do people combine a good substrate vac with a pumped water change without buckets bearing in mind that my house taps are incompatible with pythons?

I ended up using my old pond pump as the water change pump but it's really struggling for head when pumping back in and I'm balancing the water barrel on buckets and stools to raise it up enough to get it going which is a disaster waiting to happen so I will have to look for a pump with a bit more oomph! If I can get my new pump to be compatible with a gravel vac I'd be chuffed to bits, any recommendations would be gratefully received!

I just have the hose going out my window.

I had a similar problem, so I moved one of my tanks near my bedroom window and the other two close enough to my bathroom for the gravel vac to reach the toilet.

Thanks all, unfortunately my current gravel vac hose barely reaches the floor never mind the window. can anybody recommend one with a long hose that doesn't need to be sucked to be started?

Similarly, mine goes either to the sump pump or out the driveway, depending how cold/ambitious I am with the hose.

A trip to a big box home improvement store will net you a large amount of tubing. What gauge tubing do you have? You can just replace the existing hose with one that is much longer or buy an appropriately sized male/male barb to add a length onto what you have.

Iliveinazoo wrote:Thanks all, unfortunately my current gravel vac hose barely reaches the floor never mind the window. can anybody recommend one with a long hose that doesn't need to be sucked to be started?

Python hoses come with a 50' hose & I added another, to reach into my basement drain.

Thanks all, it seems that I am over-complicating things and should just get a longer hose for my current gravel vac and see how it goes.

For pumping back into the tank I'm currently thinking about a drill operated self-priming pump: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toolzone-Heavy- ... water+pump

It would mean that I have to stand next to the tank at al times but would also mean that I shouldn't flood the room. What do you's think? Has anyone tried one?

Many thanks.

That pump should work just fine. You'll have to let me know how it works out for you. I'm currently doing the lift and pour method...it's not fun.

Large gravel vac and cheap garden centre/ hardware store hose or cheap rubber tubing is easy to join with a couple of zip ties. Used it for a long time to vac and just pump back.

I thought that I would post back what I ended up getting for the water changes:

For vacuuming I bought a long hose with a siphon starter that I attached to my old gravel vac, I suck on it a bit and then begin the hand pump so that I don't get water in my mouth.
For water mixing I bought a cheap water butt and sack barrow to help move it around and I use an old pond pump for mixing the salt.
For pumping the water back in I use a garden hose which I have to weigh down in the water butt so that the end is at the bottom and then use a drill pump to pump it in, I ended up getting the following pump:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolfcraft-22000 ... B0001P196I

I tried using my battery powered Makita drill as the drill to start with and while it done the job of pumping all 100 litres into the tank it was a bit warm afterwards so to avoid breaking it I now use my 2 speed mains powered power drill which does the job a treat.

Goddess, this all sounds so complicated. I just use a hygger 5 in 1 gravel cleaner. I plug it in, flip the switch to on and it automatically starts pumping water. My husband attached tubing that he got from Lowe's to the short tube that came with my Hygger vacuum so that it will reach and drain water off of the porch. Before the longer hose I was carrying buckets of water outside but I bought a 224 gal tank and doing a partial water change of 25% on it is 56 gal and I wasn't about to carry that much water out in a bucket. I have a retracting water hose that reaches 4 of my 7 tanks so I can refill them from the outside spigot once the old water is removed. I refill the other 3 smaller tanks by carrying 2- 1 gallon jugs at a time. My faucet is also not compatible with a python hose.