Changing water in a big tank -- how do YOU do it?

[CTaylor]

Hi,
I'm seriously thinking of going from my 65 gallon to a 100 to 125 gallon. Thing I hate is water changes! Way I do it now, is a I fill up 3-4 of 5 gallon buckets and carry them to my toilet and dump it lol. Ends up being a 25% water change overall including my large sump. Before I dump it I prepare the reservoire of salt water and have that set to go. I fill the reservoire up using 5 gallon drinking water bottles, filled from my RODI, which is in my bathroom, under the sink.

Now, if I could save time in the filling my reservoire somehow that would be great. I was thinking to run the RODI pure line from the bathrrom all way to my living room where the reservoire is. But I'm scared of a flood. The RODI will not connect to my kitchen sink, closest to the living room. I mention that because I have a water on the floor shut off sensor that shuts the feed water off if there is water on the floor (where the RODI is now in the bathroom). **What do you guys do to easily fill up your reservoires?

Also, what do you guys do to more easily drain your tanks down 'the drain'?

I'm sure most that have 100 gallon + tanks are not trucking 5 gallon buckets back and forth! or are you? :-D

Thanks!

 

[sde1500]

You know, I was just thinking the same thing last night haha. RODI and mixing buckets are in the basement, sump is under the tank on the 1st floor. 65 gallon tank, when I do water changes its 5-10 gallons. Fill two buckets with waste water, dump them outside on the weeds. Fill two buckets in the basement and lug them upstairs. I need to switch that over to drinking water jugs that are easier to carry and pour haha.

But I eventually want to go to a bigger tank, 180+. Still would need to be a sump under the tank, its on a beautiful hardwood floor I have no plans of cutting through to get to the basement. No way I'd want to carry that much water around.

 

[MondoBongo]

i've got a 155 Oceanic sharing a sump with a 35 cube in my dining room.

i plumbed through the floor for a supply line that is able to be unhooked when not in use and hidden in an air vent (it wasn't an option to cut through the floor for permanent lines to do a basement sump).

my mixing station sits directly below the tank in the basement and consists of two 55 gallon brute trash cans. one for fresh water, the other for salt.

i use a python to drain the old water in to the sink, then hook up a hose lead to my supply fitting, turn on the pump in the basement, and let it fill.

if i am just doing a water change, it takes about 30 minutes. about 2/3 of that time is just waiting for the water to drain through the python hose. it's only 1/2" diameter so it takes a while. i typically change about 30 gallons at a time.

i did bucket brigade for a long time, it sucks. best thing i ever did for myself was to simplify maintenance as much as possible. makes doing it much more bearable.

for my supply to my top off reservoir it is a similar story. i have a supply line through the floor, and a tank under the stand that holds my RODI for top off. i put the hose lead in to the fitting and other end in the ATO reservoir, flip a switch, and fill it up.

 

[johnike]

I have a floor drain next to my 240.
I drain 35 gallons from it into the floor drain, pump 35 gallons back in from the reef system, then pump new water into the reef from a 44 gallon Brute can.
Nice and simple.

 

[MarkW64]

For now with my 230g tank I use two 44g Brute trash cans on dollies. I mix up 40+ gallons of new water in one Brute by my RO/DI filter. I then pump tank water into the second Brute until it has same amount of water as new water in first Brute. Then I roll can full of new water next to my tank and pump the water in and I roll old water to kitchen and pump it into the sink. Of course this requires a place to store two big Brutes -- but I have a basement for that (and where eventually my sump and water change setup will be located). It works quite well for now.

 

[MarkW64]

Wow, you gotta love the quick responses -- I wish everytime I posted a question I received four responses in under twenty minutes!:twitch:

 

[CTaylor]

Yeah.. I never had such fast and helpful ones all at once lol. I like the two cans idea. Fill them both exactly same level. then you know your replacing the exact amount you took out! Brilliant! lol. I already have a brute.. and hey I get another and I'm sure it will stack in it when not in use. I just need to get some wheels. This will save me a good 30 mins if not more each water change. The other ideas are great, but I dont have a basement, etc....

 

[alton]

I have a floor drain next to my 240.
I drain 35 gallons from it into the floor drain, pump 35 gallons back in from the reef system, then pump new water into the reef from a 44 gallon Brute can.
Nice and simple.

Like Johnike said pump it, don't carry. Bad for your back

 

[scooter31707]

Go get you 1-2 Brute containers from Home Depot/Lowes (32 gallon one or you could get bigger). I just mix my salt w/ RODI in one and pump water from the tank in the other one. Takes about 15-20 minutes.

 

[LJLKRL]

Just setting up my 210, but when I filled it with saltwater I pumped it from my storage room under my carport. Bought a long garden hose and put pvc fittings on it.
I made a piece of pvc shaped like an inverted U with a tee in the tank and a barbed fitting on the other end. (saw a video on youtube about bucketless water changes or something like that) I use this to siphon water out and down the drain and then I will pump it from the storage room to the tank again.
I carry as few buckets as possible.
I am in south Louisiana, so no basements here, and my house is a single story.

 

[Kremis]

We also use brute trash cans, lol (when I say we, I mean me and my dad) We mix salt in the trash can, and use a pump with a long hose that reaches the sink we have in the garage. Whenever we do a water change, we switch off the return pumps and drain the sump using a pump. We then fill it back up by reversing the process, pump goes into the trash can filled with saltwater which is pumped into the tank.

 

[JWClark]

I have auto changes set up now but on my previous tank I had two long pieces of hose. I would first drain the sump into the basement sink via siphon and then pump water with a Mag 7 up to fill the sump up--my mixing station is beside the sink. I now drain the waste brute at the same time I am pumping fresh water up to the NSW brute for my water change system. The hoses are probably 50 ft or more in length and this works fine. Of course I have a helper watch that the hose doesn't fall out of the sink and the pump doesn't run dry. Did the bucket thing 20yrs ago when I was a young buck and this was the first thing I figured out when I got back into it.

 

[MarkW64]

Yeah.. I never had such fast and helpful ones all at once lol. I like the two cans idea. Fill them both exactly same level. then you know your replacing the exact amount you took out! Brilliant! lol. I already have a brute.. and hey I get another and I'm sure it will stack in it when not in use. I just need to get some wheels. This will save me a good 30 mins if not more each water change. The other ideas are great, but I dont have a basement, etc....

The Brutes are made to easilly go inside eachother -- so if you already have one a second barely takes any more space. I bought two of the dollies made by Brute, but there was just a thread somewhere on here recently with people giving other money saving ideas for wheels.

 

[Jscwerve]

Bucket schlepping on my 125.

RODI is in the basement in a brute, another brute under it is saltwater mixing. I carry up 10 gallons of mixed saltwater, shut off the return pump, pump 5 gallons into a bucket, toilet dump, another 5, another dump, then pump from the two fresh buckets back into the sump. Turn on return pump.

It only takes about 15 minutes. Instead of doing 20-30 gallons at a time once a month, I do 10 gallons every weekend.

I think it would take more time (for me) to set up hoses from the saltwater mix to the tank and from the tank to a drain and then remove when done.

 

[Sk8r]

Second a Brute trashcan on a roller base. You can get them in various sizes up to monster: I have a midsize one that gives me 32 gallons at the stop point of the decorative side molding. This takes a convenient 1 gallon of salt mix. Empty, they're light, full, they roll nicely. Base is one-size-fits-all.

 

[jd371]

I'm also considering going bigger in the future. Right now I have a 85g total and I do a 20g wc every 2 weeks. The laundry room is near the tank, when I do a wc I run a 25 ft Python hose to the slop sink in the laundry room and remove 20g from the sump. Next to the slop sink is a 20g Brute with freshly mixed water. I remove the Python hose from the faucet attachment and connect it to a small pump and drop it in the Brute and pump back 20g into the sump. Start to finish is about 30 min.

 

[MTWiley]

I don't have a giant tank(just a 60 cube + sump), but I got tired of hauling buckets so I picked up a pair of food grade barrels on craigslist, washed them out really well and then made a mixing station for my garage/basement(directly under my tank/sump):

(Sorry this picture was taken while we were remodelling so it's not hooked up/plumbed to the RODI Unit & my tank/sump)

My RODI unit connects directly to the barrel on the right. That barrel has a float valve in it so that it doesn't overflow. I can pump water from the RODI barrel to my "SW" barrel on the left, dump in some salt and mix it all up in that barrel. Once I've confirmed it's at the right salinity I can either leave it be and my Apex/DoS does small nightly water changes on my tank automatically, or I can open the spigot on bottom of the barrel to fill 5 gallon buckets for my occasional manual water changes(siphoning the sand and general algae scrubbing/cleanup). Added bonus is that I don't need a RODI reservoir(previously an HD Bucket) near the tank for top off anymore. I just ran some 1/4" tubing & speaker wire from down to the garage and I was able to put my Tunze 3155 top off pump directly into the RODI barrel on the right in that picture and it tops off my sump/tank from there now.

Before I had it setup this way I had major algae problems because maintenance was such a chore. Now I just spend ~10 minutes a week turning on/off my RODI and dumping in some salt, no more bucket hauling and my tank automatically does a ~5% water change every night(whether I'm home or not).

 

[BrettDS]

This is really ironic. I literally just signed on to post a message asking about how to do a water tank in a large aquarium. I've had my 220G tank set up for about 6 months now and I'm using an apex DOS to do a continuous water change from a brute trash can in my garage. This is a great solution for me and has been working really well.

However, after dealing with a cyano issue I made the decision to use chemiclean and dosed the tank yesterday. This means I'm looking at doing a 20% (or 50G) water change tomorrow and I'm trying to figure out how best to do it.

I don't think it's really feasible to use the DOS to try to transfer 50G in a short period of time (normally I have it changing 2-3G per day). When I originally set up the tank I used what is now one of my return pumps to move water from brute trash cans in the garage through a hose into the tank, but I'd rather not disconnect the return pump at this point.

So I think I'm looking at using the good old fashioned 5G bucket method or possibly purchasing a reasonably large utility pump. I can easily siphon water out of the tank, but unfortunately I'll have to measure it as I do since I really have no idea how far down to drain the tank to remove 50G.

Thanks for the ideas in this thread.

 

[scar79]

For my 135, I have a 50 gallon vat in the closet nearby. I shut the system down, siphon off ~30 gallons to a nearby toilet using 3/4" vinyl tubing. A couple of simple A spring clamps are a must for this. Siphon off rockwork, sand, out of the overflow, whatever. Move the tubing from the toilet back to a barbed fitting on the mixing setup, turn the valve on the pump, and wait for the tank to refill.

I've worked on a number of systems. Anything beyond a 10-15 gallon water change and you're crazy to use buckets. A length of vinyl tubing is your best friend.

My favorite system was (not) coincidentally the simplest to do water changes on. It was a 500+ gallon system with a 150 gallon vat. It had a dedicated Iwaki 100 that fed the chiller and a couple of chemical reactors and returned straight back to the sump. I'd simply shut off the two return pumps and skimmers, turn two valves to direct the chiller loop to a drain line instead of back to the sump, and the 100+ gallon sump would drain down in a few minutes. The mixing vat had an Iwaki 70 plumbed into it, so two more valve turns to direct the flow to refill the sump. A few minutes later, fire the system back up, water chance complete.


Also, for those without remote filtration that don't want to drill through hardwood floors to get to the basement - don't! Open up a section of sheetrock in the wall behind the tank and drill to your basement in the wall cavity. If you ever move the tank, you're just patching some drywall and repainting.

 

[lagatbezan]

when i was first setting up my tank, I had a drain and a water line installed inside the stand. I just use a power head and a hose from the sump right to the drain and make fresh water right into the my sump making water changes a breeze.