cheap hand siphon for vivs without bulkheads

[joneill809]

I've been using one of these for a few weeks to drain my false bottoms in my vivs without a bulkhead and it's working pretty well:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00866CNV4/


I modified it slightly by cutting about 60% of the tube off the end since I have a zoomed and exoterra style front opening vivs. That mod allowed my to start the siphon with a few pumps and keep the flow going. It makes fast work of draining a viv. At under $3, I'm thinking of getting a few more. It's definitely been a lot easier than pre-priming a tube with RO water to try and get the siphon going (there's no way I'm sucking on a tube that goes in the FB of a frog tank).

The only catch is keeping the tip of the siphon off the gravel or whatever the base of your FB is (I use gravel to hide my egg crate FB). It's powerful enough to pull gravel up the tube. You can slow the flow by maintaining pressure on the ball, so once you get the feel for the siphon it works really well.

[Eric Walker]

Ace hardware in my hometown still carries this same style.