Siphons With Automatic Starts

Hi folks,

The mouthful of water has occurred one time too many, usually caused by a distraction when starting off the siphoning process. I know, from other posts on this forum, that there is an alternative of filling the tube up with water completely before starting off the process, but I've never found that particularly easy to do. There seems to be another system of connecting to the tap which is not really suitable for the location of my tank.

Instead, I'm thinking of buying something where you squeeze a pump to start off the siphoning process - something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017VZI6JI?psc=1 .  Has anyone got anything like this / had any experience of these?

Anne, do you mean this? I tried one once. The downside for me was the grill at the end of the bit that goes in the tank. I had fine gravel at the time and the grill was designed for those rocks on the bottom of the biorbs. I got gravel stuck in the grill. It would have been fine if I'd had standard sized gravel.

Other than the gravel issue, it worked fine.


fcmf - do you have problems with the kind that you shake up and down in the tank to start the siphon? That's the kind I used with gravel. I use wine making siphon tubing now I have sand as I find that picks the mess up better than hovering a wide tube over that sand. And no I don't suck it to start the siphon, I fill the tube with tapwater first. That is easy to to do with just a piece of tubing, no wide section on the end.

I use one similar to the one in the OP but only spent about £2 on it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Siphon-Vacuum-Gravel-Cleaner-Aquarium/dp/B00AAWO3TW

It works perfectly and its so easy even my four year old can do it.

I can't remember whether mine unscrewed, it's a few years ago now. Maybe they changed the design since then or i would just have unscrewed mine 

I managed to use them without problem for years and I am well known for being messy.

This is the type I used. It is a bit tricky to see from the photo but there is a wide see-through cylinder at one end and narrow tubing attached to it via a blue plastic cap which you can just see sticking out of the packaging in the photo in the link. The blue thing has a one way valve inside. All you do is assemble it by attaching the tubing to the narrow end of the blue connector, put the tubing end in the bucket and the wide end in the tank, then move the wide end up and down quickly a few times. This pushes waster up the cylinder and past the blue connector but it can't fall back because of the valve. Once enough water has been pushed through so that the level is below the water surface in the tank, it starts to flow by itself.
If you were to get one of these I suggest you practice with a bucket of water on a stool outdoors first.

But be careful - some cheap makes don't have a one way valve in the blue bit. You still have to suck those.

I had a couple without the valve back in the late 1990s. As soon I as discovered the ones with the valve I always made sure when I bought a new one. Looking on-line, some types now make reference to a ball valve but the ones I had used a flap inside the neck of the blue bit - as soon as the water started to flow back towards the tank it pushed the flap shut. They rattled when shaken out of water, the simplest way to check if they were the valve type.
They did need replacing every so often because the neck of the blue bit eventually cracked at the junction and they became useless.


There is a technique for starting the valve type, which is why I suggested practicing with a bucket.