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How to slowly fill the aquarium the first time?

Wisey

Wisey

Member
Joined
19 Jul 2014
Messages
1,061
Hi All,

I'm after some tips on filling the aquarium slowly the first time so I don't disturb plants and substrate. My water containers are 25 litre bottles with an opening of about 5 cm in width, so I can't fit a submersible pump. I purchased a Hydor pump, link here:

http://www.swelluk.com/aquarium/pum.../hydor-centrifugal-pump-universal-246027.html

I selected the smallest version of this because it said it had a variable flow control and could be used in a non-submersible mode. Unfortunately, after receiving last night, I discover that to fit the extra pipe to use it non-submersible, you have to remove the flow control dial and can only run it at 700 lph, which is way faster than I want to fill my 120 litre aquarium.

I see some people in videos filling up just using airline, but no idea what pump you might use to do that, does anyone have any ideas?

I guess another option would be to try and restrict the flow further up the tubing using some sort of valve, again, suggestions appreciated? The tubing I purchased to go with the pump is 12mm ID.

I have ordered my plants and will be planting and flooding on Saturday, so I need something that I can get my hands on quickly.

Appreciate any help you can give me!

Wisey.
 
25litre bottles amount to 25kg of weight, so I'd say lift/place the bottle higher than the tank, use a tube/hose large enough to achieve the flow rate you want, the usual plate trick and let gravity do the rest!
 
I don't own anything that is high enough to hold the bottle above the tank, and I really don't fancy holding it the entire time it takes for 25 litres to go down some airline. Call me lazy if you like, haha 🙂
 
I may have found a solution. I just ordered a 16/22 to 12/16 hose reducer, so I can connect the hose from the pump to some larger hose and then on to a spare 16/22 eheim tap set that I have lying around. I can then use the ball valve in the tap set to regulate the flow going in to the aquarium. I may even grab the inlet pipe that came with my eheim filter from the loft and use that to get the water in to the aquarium as that should diffuse the flow to some extent. Can anyone see any problems with this? Will the pump have issues if I put too much back pressure on it by closing down the tap too far?
 
Andy D said:
Rather than hose reducers etc why not just pour the water into a bucket and pump it from there?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had considered using my waste water bucket for the initial fill up and using the pump in its submersible form, but I'm hoping to get a tidier solution with less chance of spills and mess. I may also want to use this solution long term for water changes so would prefer to be able to fill directly from my storage containers.
 
The apartment has mixer taps with fairly non standard sizes and shapes, so not easy to fit anything to them. The only way that I can fill my 25 litre containers is to stand in the shower, remove the shower head from the hose and then use the hose to fill up the container.

My reducer should arrive today, so I will test out setting up wilth the eheim ball valve tonight, that should give me good control of the flow.

Thanks for everyone's contributions!
 
I did a test last night after my reducer arrived. It turns out that the pump I bought only works "under head", so even primed, it will not pump up from the 25 litre container. I therefore had to go for the bucket option and run it submersed, which is a pain, but not the end of the world for the initial fill, I have a better method which is so far untested using my filter pump to refill from the containers for weekly water changes.

I connected the 12/16 hose from the pump to the new reducer, connected that to some 16/22, on to the Eheim double tap set, then connected that with some more hose to the green curved pipe that comes with the Eheim filter for connecting your tubing to the spraybar. I then put the inlet strainer thing on the end of that which diffuses the flow. I can now get a really slow fill initially as I am running the pump on the lowest setting and have the tap almost shut, then as things fill up I can increase the flow rate.
 
Wisey said:
I connected the 12/16 hose from the pump to the new reducer, connected that to some 16/22, on to the Eheim double tap set, then connected that with some more hose to the green curved pipe that comes with the Eheim filter for connecting your tubing to the spraybar. I then put the inlet strainer thing on the end of that which diffuses the flow. I can now get a really slow fill initially as I am running the pump on the lowest setting and have the tap almost shut, then as things fill up I can increase the flow rate.
Click to expand...
Be very very careful doing this there are quite a few failure modes that cause major issues.

- If your water is not dechlorinated (yes that include RO which also must also be dechlorinated) you will kill your filter bacteria.
- If your water is not preheated, again may cause filter bacteria issues.
- If your pump fails, you can end up back syphoning you tank, contents of filter into your water container and onto the floor. There is a nice picture somewhere of somebodies lounge after this happened.

When I was filling my tank remotely, via pre-warmed dechlorinated water in containers in the kitchen, I connected a JBL750 pump to a length of hose pipe and a remote control mains socket in the kitchen. So I put the pump in the water container, wheeled the hose out from kitchen to tank (about 10 meters) , press on on remote control to start pumping. When tank was full, press stop, job done, clear away...
 
ian_m said:
When I was filling my tank remotely, via pre-warmed dechlorinated water in containers in the kitchen, I connected a JBL750 pump to a length of hose pipe and a remote control mains socket in the kitchen. So I put the pump in the water container, wheeled the hose out from kitchen to tank (about 10 meters) , press on on remote control to start pumping. When tank was full, press stop, job done, clear away...
Click to expand...

WOW! its incredible the things we do in this hobby. Were you using cameras and all?
 
ian_m said:
Be very very careful doing this there are quite a few failure modes that cause major issues.

- If your water is not dechlorinated (yes that include RO which also must also be dechlorinated) you will kill your filter bacteria.
- If your water is not preheated, again may cause filter bacteria issues.
- If your pump fails, you can end up back syphoning you tank, contents of filter into your water container and onto the floor. There is a nice picture somewhere of somebodies lounge after this happened.

When I was filling my tank remotely, via pre-warmed dechlorinated water in containers in the kitchen, I connected a JBL750 pump to a length of hose pipe and a remote control mains socket in the kitchen. So I put the pump in the water container, wheeled the hose out from kitchen to tank (about 10 meters) , press on on remote control to start pumping. When tank was full, press stop, job done, clear away...
Click to expand...

This is a brand new aquarium and filter, so there is no bacteria colony to kill yet. I'm not connecting to the tap as some have suggested. I have 25 litre containers that I fill, will dechlorinate them and have them roughly the right temp, then I am using my pump to put them in to the tank slowly so as not to disturb substrate and plants. I'll be with the pump whenever it is operating. The annoyance is that the pump is not capable of pumping out of the containers in its non-submersed mode, so I need to empty my container to a bucket, let the pump sit in the water and pump it up, but while it is doing that, I will be able to refill the containers with fresh water and dechlorinate.
 
I fill my tank quite fast using a Ehiem 1000litre/hour pump via 16/22 pipe into the tank from my water butt next to the tank. I use a 2litre plastic jug in the tank to act as a flow deflector and a plastic G clamps to hold the tube in the jug and to the side of the tank. Works fine no disturbance of substrate.
 
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