Using a Python Hose to Change Fish Tank Water

Video Transcript

CHRISTIE OWNES: Hi, my name is Christie and I'm with Expert Village. And I'm teaching you proper care of fish today and a little bit about the different types of fish. And now, I'm going to teach you how to use the python so that I'm going to teach you how to do a fish tank. The first step is you're going to turn your hot water and your cold water on. Which makes a little bit of noise which might be hard to talk over. When you're doing this and your pieces of your [INDISCERNIBLE] went out like mine are, you might take it and hand it in your wash rag. Put it over the top of it such as I am here so that the water doesn't spray and get the kitchen wet. When you're going to use a python, make sure you don't have any kinks in your hose. If you have any kinks in your hose, then it prevents your water from flowing through your python and slows the process down on cleaning your fish tank. To clean the fish tank, first thing we're going to do is raise the hood to your tank. We're going to insert the python into the tank. As I showed you earlier, when I turned the hot water and the cold water on, this creates a suction which you just saw our water go up the tube. When you're doing a water change, typically, the thing you want to do is take the python, stick it on the substrate and lift up. When you do this, you want to do it very gently and it's usually you have a gravel substrate in your tank that's easier to do in gravel. In this tank, I have a sand bed to it so I'm not going to demonstrate on how to do this properly because if I do, it's going to so suck all the sand out of my tank which I don't want it to happen. But I will demonstrate a little bit on how to use it. When doing water changes, you're going to stick this python in the gravel, let it suck it up, lift up and let it drain back down as you've seen here. This should move out the fish food and the fish waste in doing this, you usually want to start to the corner of the tank, stick it down, pick it up, let the gravel fall out. As the gravel falls out, you'll scoop back to back just a little bit and be careful and don't suck the fish up 'cause every now and then, they do wanted to get in the way as my little cory cat does here. But when you pick it up, you'll move back, stick it in another spot, let it pick up and then pick it up to release it. If you want to make a pattern of doing this where you're going to go front to back, once you get to the back, you're going to move over just a little bit, stick it down and release it and come all the way back up. You'll make a pattern then go all the way across the tank, sticking and picking. When you're doing a water change with a python, do not stick the python down on the gravel such this and stir it like that because that defeats the purpose. As you can tell, I just disturbed the substrate and made all the fish and the fish waste float to the top of the tank and surrounded in water. This defeats the purpose of doing a water change. So, what we're going to do is just stick it and pick it. Right now, my fish are getting a little agitated, maybe because they have babies in the tank and doing they don't like doing the water changes. There's also another safety mechanism that you also want to do. Is you want to try to power off through your tank, being that we have a heater in the tank and we also have a filter. The heater, if you do not turn off the power to your tank, you can crack the heater so you want to try and power off then you can also bring your closure up if you drain the water out and it does not continue hold water flowing through it. Now we have cut the power off to the tank to make it safer and easier to use the python. What I've continue to do is drain 75% of water out of this tank which would take it down to here just enough to keep the fish covered in water. The reason why I'm taking out 75% of the water on this tank is because there are eighty-six plus fish in this tank. As a thirty gallon tank which a thirty gallon tank usually cannot handle eighty-six fish but like I said, I do 75% water changes so I can get away with this. This draining in the tank will take up to ten minutes. So, we'll come back and see you in ten minutes later when the tank is empty and ready to fill.

Watch these related videos

• 
  Refilling a Fish Tank With a Python Hose

  playlist Views: 1,161

• 
  Using a Python Hose to Drain Water Out of a Fish Tank

  playlist Views: 1,366

• 
  Maintaining a Python Hose

  playlist Views: 817

• 
  Changing Fish Tank Water

  playlist Views: 1,352

• 
  Drain Tank for Toilet Repair

  playlist Views: 2,462

• 
  How to Clean Gecko Habitats

  playlist Views: 4,292

Community Members who...

• Favorited this Video
• Rated This Video

Top Tags