Tank maintenance is the most dreaded part of fish keeping and the most abused part of tank cleaning.  Mainly, I think, because people make it harder on themselves than they need or make themselves think that its harder to do than it actually is.  I have a dog also and the way I look at it is that I clean up behind my dog everyday so why can’t I clean up behind my fish once every week or two. When I first started to do the water changes on my 55gallon tank I made it really hard on myself.  I took a gallon jug, cut the top off of the jug, dipped the jug in the tank and dumped the water in the toilet. I figured 35% water change every week on a 55-gallon tank, was 20 jugs out and 20 jugs in!! With the level of fish population that I am currently maintaining in my tank, I need to change around 35% of its water per week

But that was too hard!!

So, I purchased a hose and an adapter that I would hook up to the kitchen sink. 20 jugs out and a 5-gallon bucket to pour the water in, take 4 buckets of water to the toilet (and spill water everywhere) and fill up the tank with the water straight from the tap. I didn’t have to worry about PH because my tank has a crushed coral substrate!!

That was still too hard!!    I had water all over the place 

Next I bought a gravel siphon, siphon the gravel and suck the water out at the same time into my buckets, hook the hose up to the sink to fill’er up and I thought I had figure that thing out!!!!!  I was in heaven!!  Then we moved and bought the 180 gallon tank  was this way of carrying buckets, now across the basement to the sump pump or out the back door really going to cut it? 

That became really HARD!!

So I searched some websites and some stores and found my saving grace!!  The Python!! 

 Attach the Python hose right to a faucet at a sink, turn on the water in the tap, and watch as your tank empties and the gravel is cleaned with no muss and no fuss. Refuse goes right down the drain. There’s an attachment that uses the suction from your water pressure to pull the water out of the tank. When your ready to refill the tank with water you change the position of the attachment and the water refills the tank.  For most people this is a very easy way of cleaning a tank especially if the tank is close to a faucet.  However my closest faucet was 50 feet a way.  They make a python that long, but it took too long to do a 30% water change on a 180-gallon tank!!  At 50 feet the water is not moving as fast and so:

That became really hard for me!!

Finally I found this thing called a flotec pump, it’s a type of sump pump.  It’s great!!It only cost me 70 bucks.  I add it to the end of my python, plug that sucker in, and it sucks 30% of the water out in 15 minutes!!                                          

 I then unplug the pump Hook the python up to the faucet to refill the water, at the same temp that I took it out, or very close.  I add declorinator to the water, 1 drop for every gallon of water that I’ve taken out.  I marked the tank at 20 gallon intervals when I was using the 5 gallon buckets, but the fish cannot overdose on declorinator so the way I feel is that if I have a 55 gallon tank then lets use 55 drops to be on the safe side!  I also add cichlid salt by Seachem for the amount of water taken out and replaced; the instructions are on the bottle for the amount of salt to use.  This is great, and not HARD!!!

BUT………. I cant’ siphon the gravel out when I do this, because the gravel will clog the python hose.  So I just hang the end of the hose in the tank, make sure it doesn’t touch the gravel so that it won’t suck up the gravel and let-er rip!  The good thing is that African cichlids love to excavate there territories and therefore the gravel is always mixed by them.  Currently every three to six months, I take all of the rocks out, mix the gravel by hand and take about 50% of the water out.  Which really cleans the tank, but soon I will put a revere flow gravel filter in the tank so that no debris will settle on the bottom of the tank.  

I feel that people, fishluvers, spend a lot of money on fish, decorations and everything else, but if you spend a little more money in “automating” the cleaning process.  The Cleaning process will no longer be a chore.