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Small pump and heater for water changes

DEL 707

Member
Joined
18 Jul 2009
Messages
81
I'm currently doing 20l water changes on my nano tank.

At the moment since there's no livestock in the tank, I'm not bothering to heat up the water.
But can anyone recommend me a small heater, plus a small water pump to help me with water changes?
 
Why the pump?

If this is your only aquarium then a watering can which holds roughly 10 Litres could be the easy answer; siphon 2 can fulls out, rinse the can, fill it up with water from your taps (along with a dechlorinator) and pour it in with the rose on the can.
Assuming you have running hot water in your house then this gives you heated water 'on tap' so you just need to regulate the temperature inside the can when you fill it up then there's plenty of simple aquarium siphons with hand pumps on the market for less than £15 and a watering can for less than £5 so £20 in total gets you an easy water change system.
Problem solved? :thumbup:

If this isn't the only aquarium in your house then there are different things you can do for bigger capacity changes but not worth it for 20L
 
Most small pond pumps can easily do the job (often cheaper than the aquarium version) - just check the “head height” vs flow chart, to be certain it will deliver suitable flow rates
Use an aquarium filter inlet (or similar) to disperse the flow (so as not to churn up soil substrate)

Is there some reason you don’t want to use your warm tap water?
 
How many litres is your Nano?

I use rainwater in my Nano and keep a couple of 5 litre containers of it tucked away in the lounge. If it feels a bit cool I place the container in a bucket of hot water for a while to bring it up to temperature.
 
I believe you should only use hot water from a combi boiler as old school hot water cylinders can add copper and other nasties to the aquarium...
 
I believe you should only use hot water from a combi boiler as old school hot water cylinders can add copper and other nasties to the aquarium...
Never done me any harm.
Maybe not so much in new builds but traditional plumbing uses copper as a pipe that the water travels along using either system.
As for other nasties, I'm unsure what these would be aside from limescale provided your header tank is sterile and you keep the storage temperature up high enough to kill any harmful bacteria (good practice anyway).

All from my understanding of things and if people know different I would like to hear. :)
 
If your tap water contained copper dissolved from copper pipes, all our houses would be flooded after the pipes dissolved after many years. My parents house was replumbed in the 60's and no sign of missing copper pipes after 60 years.
 
I had a leaking copper storage cylinder taken out and the inside was coated with limescale so where the old pipes.
 
I had a leaking copper storage cylinder taken out and the inside was coated with limescale so where the old pipes.
Which is another reason why the copper does not and cannot dissolve.

There are a couple of cases where there can be copper issues.

In the 70's and early 80's copper pipe was drawn using graphite as a lubricant and due to improper practice (not cleaning correctly) ended up with granules of carbon (from graphite) embedded in the copper pipe. The carbon and copper when wet formed a battery and preferentially ate away the copper. Normally wasn't an issue BUT large lumps of carbon resulted in pin hole leaks in copper pipe appearing.



Use of not certified brass. The green stain, often seen under dripping taps is due to incorrect brass being used in the taps, leading to "dezincification" of the brass. Using proper WRAS (water board approved) taps this isn't an issue as correct brass is used. Buy a set of cheap Ebay Chinese taps and you will get green stains and taps leaking after only a couple of years.
 
I personally wouldn't worry about copper levels from pipes and tanks, they will be minimal at best and with 50% water changes per week that dilutes what is already a tiny, tiny amount even further. Prior to coming back to freshwater I kept marines for over 10 years culminating on a 1000 litre full SPS reef system. Corals are particularly sensitive to copper but I didn't see anything that indicate there was an issue. There were also marine shrimps in the tank. We were living in a 1950's build property at the time
 
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