Best Way To Clean A Large Aquarium

My Roma 240 L is officially cycled (yay and yay some more!) so I'm on to the last stage of Sue's guide to fishless cycling: doing a 75% or more water change to clear the nitrates.

With my current/old 90L aquarium doing a big water change wasn't too bad but going forward with a bigger tank I'm not particularly looking forward to hauling lots of buckets (yes, maybe I should have thought about this before, but I decided to cross that bridge when I got there!).

For tomorrow's big water change I'll be draining with a hose and probably refiling with a hose from the outside cold water tap (as there'll be no fish in it yet), but what do people here use to do their water changes?

I use buckets.
It's a bit tedious, but there we go.

Hello Mascol. I'm only a 200litre tank at present but I syphon into a 30litre bucket but then have a small pump constantly taking the water out to a garden water butt for the hanging baskets (a nice bit of liquid fertiliser for them) For the refill I also have a 60 litre store of water that I condition and preheat to tank temperature ready for next weeks change and use the same pump to refill the tank. Just don't get distracted when refilling!!

I've bought a JBL Aqua In and Out, but it hasn't arrived yet so I can't review it. This was to make modest water changes much more efficient, as I plan to run the outlet out the conservatory window and directly into the outflow grate. Fresh water returned via a hose; dechlorinator pre-applied to tank. I will allow the tank to over-heat to about 27 degrees and return cold water. For a 20% water change I doubt this would cause any problems to the fish.

I bought the whole "kit" which is more expensive, but from looking around you could probably buy the constituent parts, especially the siphon, separately for a lot cheaper. Just a suggestion.

In the end i realised i didnt have a suitable length of hosepipe (doh), so did my 80% water change with siphon, large plastic jug and my trusty bucket. Took a fair while, but the end result was worth it.

Cora, any system that doesn't involve buckets is of interest to me. I'd be very interested in reading a review of your JBL once it's arrived.

Mascha

It still hasn't arrived and I'm chasing up the seller on eBay. Their reputation is good so I assume it's an honest mistake.

I'm also through with carrying buckets!

In the meantime I do water changes with a stretch of PVC transparent tubing. You can get this of any size and length on eBay; it's very cheap. I suck a bit on the end and once the flow starts I point it out the door (my tank is in a conservatory) and let gravity do the rest. I drain about 20-30% of the water this way. I have a hose which is permanently connected to the tap in my back garden - I just run the hose into the tank and against a plastic carrier bag. Adding Prime to the flow I just use cold water and don't attempt to equalise the temperature. The difference in temp is only a couple of degrees at most and the heater gets this back to nominal in no time.

Note: if I were changing more than 30% I wouldn't add this much cold water to the tank. But for regular weekly water changes of 10-20% I don't think there's any problem with adding dechlorinated water straight from the "cold" tap (it's not that cold anyway). My weekly water changes are now so easy I actually look forward to them.

There's also a product called "python" which does the same thing: basically the pressure from the water tap acts as a siphon so no need to suck on tubing yourself. The idea is to drain the water then reverse the flow and put fresh stuff in. Nice and easy. But I'll let you know after I've used it.

Cheers Cora, i had been wondering about adding just cold water - as my tank is 240,  I think I'll just give it a go. Anything to get away from buckets really! Im sure in nature the water temperature will vary too.

By the way I've shamelessly borrowed your plastic bag trick and that worked well; no big dents in my substrate.