How you do water change in cold places?

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boyohboy

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Jan 28, 2004
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Hi just wondering how you ppl who lives in up north in the cold weather places do water change to your tank? I know "ageing"/dechlor water overnite isn't really neccessary, but matching the temperature is still quite important, right?

The water from my tap duing winter is literally freezing. Now I have to put water in 2 buckets and put in front of the radiator for 1-2 days before it's even close to the room temp. Sometimes top-upping the tank with merely a few scroop of cold tap water can already lower the whole tank temp by couple of degree C.

So how you ppl do it? Do you just use heated hot water from tap? I'm always abit worry about the water quality coming from the water furnace, i don't even use the hot water for cooking and feeding my cats... am I just oversensitive?
 
During the winter, I will sometimes heat the water, but not always. Changing out 25% only drops the tank 2-3 degrees, and most fish are fine with that. For larger changes, and the puffer tank, I will heat the water--ditto the garbage can and spare heater routine.
 
My tanks have been fine using cold tap water. I let it get up to room temp for at least a day before changes. It does drop the temp of the water a bit but not dramatically. The fish have handled it fine and the cories actually dig it.

You could get yourself another heater to match temps more closely.

Tom
 
We fill ours using the siphon(sp?) with water untill it matches our tank water (we judge by our hand) and just fill it up.

You could always use a combo of hot/cold water.....
 
What I do (and I only have a small 10 gallon tank) is to draw the water the night before and sit it by the radiator/register.

Then the next day I heat a pot of water on the stove and add it to the already drawn water.

I stick the thermometer from my tank into the pail of water, and I've come within a degree of the tank water every time.

This might not work for you if you have large water changes, but if you have a big enough pot, you could give it a try.
 
My only warning with using hot tap water is that you can't be too sure what is in your hot water tank. The water coming from the hot water tap can contain more metals and scale than the water from the cold water lines. Some house are fine, others aren't. I learned that the hard way.

In that situation, your invertebrates will be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. If the hot water has nasties in it, the invertebrates will die off in a hurry.

Tom
 
I've always mixed hot and cold water, even to feed to my aging reservoirs (either spare tanks or similar to Cearbhaill's) without problems. I can see that there could be issues, but I have not encountered such. And I do a fair bit with FW inverts.
 
Indeed, the quality of the hot water from the tap is the main reason I haven't been using it directly, living in this who-know-how-many-decades-old apartment building.

I duno, maybe I should give the tap hot water a try. Having to keep couple of buckets in my room to warm up the cold water all the time is quite a mess.
 
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