Garden hoses were never meant to inflate your blow-up pool, fill your kiddie swimming pool, or add a few extra gallons to your water bed mattress. Yet people use garden hoses for these tasks every summer.
In fact, when surveyed, more than 40% of Americans admit they’ve used a regular old garden hose to fill objects that aren’t meant to be filled with water—things like pools, toys, sleeping bags and even Aquarium.
Table of Contents
Can I Use a Garden Hose To Fill My Aquarium
You can use a garden hose to fill your aquarium. However, you’ll need a few pieces of equipment to make this happen safely.
You’ll need:
- A hose adapter with threaded ends
- A plastic bucket
- A sink filter (or you can use a coffee filter)
One end of the adapter should screw into your sink’s faucet. The other end should screw onto your garden hose. Once this is in place, you can turn on your faucet and fill the bucket with water from your garden hose.
What Kind of Water Should I Use?
Do not use distilled water or de-ionized (DI) water from a water purification system for your aquarium unless it is intended for that purpose and has been made suitable for fish by adding minerals back into it. You can buy purified drinking water at some grocery stores and gas stations — that’s OK to use in an emergency, but it isn’t going to help much with hardness if that’s what’s causing problems with your tank. Your best bet is to use treated tap water in most cases.
If your tap water is treated with chlorine or chloramine, you need to remove them first. In most parts of the U.S., you can use a product called PRIME to detoxify the chlorine and chloramine in your tap water. Follow the instructions on the bottle.
If your tap water contains ammonia or nitrites, you should not use it in your aquarium without first being sure you have good biological filtration in place.
Is It Safe to Wash My Aquarium With Soap And Water?
There’s some debate over whether you should ever clean the inside of your aquarium. If it’s really dirty and you don’t have a lot of fish in there, this could be an option, but most experts say you should avoid washing the tank. I’m going to explain why, and then talk about some alternatives.
Most tanks are made out of glass. This is great for visibility and durability, but when it comes to cleaning, it has its drawbacks. Glass absorbs the things that are cleaned from it. It also absorbs odors from the environment. When soap is used on glass, it leaves behind a residue that can be harmful to fish.
You can imagine how this could be a problem if you use soap to clean a tank that has fish in it! You might not see any soap suds, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t soap residue left on the inside of the glass that could harm your fish.
One way around this is to use non-soap detergents like vinegar or lemon juice. These are more effective at removing dirt without leaving any residue behind. However, they still pose a risk to your fish because they may be absorbed into their skin through contact with water or food particles in the water column.
Expand Your Knowledge Base
There are three reasons why you should not use a garden hose to fill your Aquarium:
1. The water pressure from a garden hose is far, far too strong for an aquarium. You will almost certainly crack or break the glass of your tank, and then you’ll have to clean up the mess or worse: buy a new aquarium!
2. There’s no way to regulate the flow of water from a garden hose, so it’s likely you’ll end up with a giant mess on your hands before you’re able to turn off the water.
3. Even if you had water pressure that was just perfect and were able to regulate the flow of water from your garden hose, you’d still be faced with another problem: fish poop (and other debris) that collects in your garden hose after it’s been sitting out in your yard all season long. Your fish deserve better than tap water that has been contaminated by fish poop!
Finally
You can use a garden hose to fill your aquarium, but you should be careful and follow some specific steps. If you use a garden hose, make sure it’s one that has not been used for toxic chemicals or anything else that could harm your fish.
- If you’re using a new garden hose, flush it thoroughly with water before filling your aquarium so that any debris or dust is removed before the water enters the tank.
- When filling the tank with a hose, you may want to place a bucket near the end of the hose to catch any debris that washes out from the hose.
- We recommend using an aquarium nozzle on your garden hose to start and stop the flow of water. This will allow you to fill the tank without having someone hold the hose in place.