Aquarium Water Changes Without Carrying Buckets
Refilling a fish tank by the bucket is the part that hurts your back. Fish keepers with bad joints and far-off sinks found a way to skip the carrying.
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In 2023 somebody in r/Aquariums asked a question with a sore back behind it. Getting the old water out was fine, since gravity does that part for free. What they were sick of was dumping buckets of new water back into the tank.
Someone in that thread had almost put their back out doing exactly that, into a 75-gallon tank.
If a bad back, bad joints or a tank a long way from any tap makes the buckets the worst part of keeping fish, the people in these threads have mostly stopped carrying them. What took the bucket's place is a small submersible pump, the kind sold for garden ponds and fountains, and a length of tubing.
Who does their water changes this way?
Someone posted a photo of their own pump and tubing with the title "Cheaper than a python water change system". Ten five-gallon buckets a week, they said further down, would destroy their back.
The replies were people who already did it and found it a lot less of a chore. One had been trying to think of this since moving to a house where no faucet took the Python.
In a thread about hardware-store hacks, a fish keeper with joint issues says carrying and dumping buckets isn't feasible for them, and that the pump makes the job faster as well as easier.
Back in the 75-gallon thread, someone with osteonecrosis in their shoulders, living alone, said water changes with a five-gallon bucket are hard to do.
The fullest account is on the Aquarium Co-Op forum, from a member whose septic tank and old faucets had ruled a Python out.
I was siphoning water into 5 gallon buckets and dumping them out the front door and carrying 3 gallon buckets from the sink to refill the tanks and ended up hurting my back. So I bought the pump and it has made water changes a piece of cake.
DeadStang, on the Aquarium Co-Op forum
That thread was started by someone with no sink or faucet near the tank. That's the other reader this is for, the one whose tank is nowhere near a tap.
How a pump water change works
A submersible pump is sealed, so the whole thing sits in the water. Switch it on and the water goes wherever the hose goes.
To drain, the pump goes in the tank. Run the tubing to a drain, the bathtub or out of a window, and switch it on. A pump only pulls the water down to its own base, so where you set it is where the draining stops.
The forum member with the sore back runs theirs out to whichever flower bed needs watering. It doesn't suck up their fish or floating plants, they say. Another member sits the pump inside a mesh media bag so nothing small gets pulled in.
To refill, the pump goes in a bucket in the sink. Run the tubing to the tank and keep the tap running into the bucket. One reply in a thread about pull-down faucets lays the whole method out, down to watching the temperature of what's going in.
Someone who pairs a pump with their Python says the bucket just sits there in the sink, and the only job is keeping the water running so the pump has enough.
The forum member tips their dechlorinator into the fill bucket while the pump runs. If your pump is on the weak side, the fish keeper with joint issues raises the bucket on a chair to help it along.
The tubing is a separate purchase. One owner got theirs at Home Depot, because the pump came without. The size depends on the pump's outlet, so match it once the pump arrives.
Then take that owner's other tip and glue the tubing onto the outlet, because it pops off otherwise.
Can you use a pond pump for aquarium water changes?
Yes, and that's what most of these people have. The one we'd point at is the hygger quick water change pump, because its maker's page answers the questions the threads leave open.
The owner who says the brand makes good ones has the smallest of its four sizes. They wish they'd gone bigger, since it takes about eight minutes to empty a five-gallon bucket.
Whichever you buy, look for an intake on the bottom and a lift rating taller than the climb from bucket to tank. The bottom intake is so it can get most of the water out of the bucket. The maker of the hygger says its pumps keep going down to about an inch of water.
The lift rating is the height a pump can push water, and it drops as the pump gets smaller. The maker lists 5.3 feet for its smallest and 7.3 for the next size up. Measure from the bottom of the bucket to the rim of the tank, and buy over it.
Don't overdo it either. One owner whose hardware-store pump has real horsepower says it will shoot a stream twenty feet straight up, which is more than a fish tank asks for.
What a pump won't do
It can't vacuum the gravel. On an older forum, a fish keeper drains a 180-gallon tank by pump, but somebody in the same thread points out that the gravel doesn't get cleaned that way. A UK aquarium shop's blog has the pump take over only once the basic vacuuming is done.
The forum member with the sore back siphons into buckets for the gravel, then drops the pump into those buckets and empties them down the hose. The bucket still exists. It just never leaves the floor.
Nobody agrees on running it dry. The person who started the pull-down thread worried that their new faucet pours so slowly that any decent pump would outrun it and end up running dry. A Singapore shop's buying guide says never, even for a few seconds.
An owner three years into the same cheap pump says a little dry is fine as long as it's still slurping water to cool the motor. The hygger's maker sits in between. Its protection circuit shuts the pump off when it runs hot and starts it again when it cools. The maker is careful to say that isn't an auto shut-off, though.
Keep the tap ahead of the pump and switch the pump off when the bucket runs low, and none of the three has to be right.
It still needs a bucket in the sink. A Python fills straight from the tap with nothing to watch, where a pump means keeping an eye on the water level. The pump's side of that argument is that it wastes less water, since a Python runs the tap to start its siphon.
If you own a Python and your only trouble is that it won't screw onto the faucet, there are a few things to try before you buy a pump.
Buy the hygger quick water change pump one size up from the smallest, or any pond pump with a bottom intake and a lift rating over that bucket-to-rim climb. Add a mesh bag and tubing from the hardware store, and do the drain half first.
Set the pump in the tank at the line you want to drain to, run the hose out of the door, and switch it on. Once you've watched twenty gallons leave the room without a bucket leaving the floor, the fill half can wait for next weekend.
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