re-fill, no spill water change hose...

[kj5kb]

I use a Y on my clothes washer taps to feed my fill hose...and another Y to combine the hot and cold. I found the pressure was too high and added an RV pressure regulator after the hot/cold Y. I use RV white drinking water hose from Big Lots. Many folks have told me they use a regular garden hose with no problems however.

For drain, I use a Penguin 660r powerhead feeding an old garden hose.

 

[SubRosa]

Using vinyl hose is its own punishment. It kinks if you look at it wrong. I found out the hard way, no reason for you to as well!

 

[AbbeysDad]

Using a regular garden hose to fill/refill a fish tank is just fine! We're told not to drink from them (as we did every day in the summer as kids....and somehow survived) because of the spurious amounts of bacteria that can grow in a typical garden hose out on the lawn.
Get a decent garden hose, dedicate to use for fish tank use and it will be fine.
Note: even if there was leaching of some dangerous poly vinyl evil, the water isn't there long enough to capture much of anything. Fear not.

 

[SubRosa]

Using a regular garden hose to fill/refill a fish tank is just fine! We're told not to drink from them (as we did every day in the summer as kids....and somehow survived) because of the spurious amounts of bacteria that can grow in a typical garden hose out on the lawn.
Get a decent garden hose, dedicate to use for fish tank use and it will be fine.
Note: even if there was leaching of some dangerous poly vinyl evil, the water isn't there long enough to capture much of anything. Fear not.

As someone who once worked in the field of aquatic bioassay, I can categorically state that you are wrong. Aquatic bioassay is a procedure in which the toxicity of various substances, most often sewage plant effluent, is mixed with a known good water source in varying concentrations do determine an LC 50, the concentration of the substance which kill 50% of the organisms exposed to it during the course of the study. To eliminate any potential interference, we took lengths of regular garden hose that we were intending to use to pump the control water from the ocean or reservoir, depending on where the plant discharged. A 4"" length in 4 gallons of water killed every Fathead and Sheepshead Minnow we exposed to it within a few days. Naturally our next stop was an RV center to get hose rated for potable water. All organism survived the week's course of the study using this hose. You may not acutely kill your fish using a regular garden hose, but you're certainly doing them no favor using one. You certainly want to run water through the hose to flush any water that was laying in there before adding it to your tank.