Aquarium water

[Breakthecycle2]

Suck on the siphon, take a swig. Suck on the siphon again, take another swig. Make a game of it.

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And who says Fish keeping isn't any fun

 

[Tolak]

Holy cripes, they must have spawned, I'm seeing twice as many fishies!!! Hic!!!

Tolak

 

[smooth_bourbon]

lol glad to hear someone else thinks like me. I wasnt paying attention and sucked so hard water shot straight down my throat when I did my water change a few days ago. After some gagging and coughing I grabbed my bottle of scotch and took a couple shots. I am not taking any chances. For the record I feel great no stomach cramps here.

 

[littleimp]

Yes their will be a small amount of poo & pee in their but this pollution is measurable in your nitrites, nitrates & ammonia levels.

If you have test kits try this. (assuming you have a healthy & well filtered tank)

1.Measure you tank water for above
2. Measure your tapwater for above.

Unless your'e doing something wrong the tap water will be 10-20 times more polluted than your tank water!!!!

A good example of this is my German Sheperd Harley.

Put a bowlful of tapwater down & she sticks here nose up at it. She gets her water from our Koi pool (heavily filtered & excellent readings).

In 3 years she has never been sick or any other stomach upsets.

Did you know that London water runs on a constant cycle & that the average glass of water has been through someone 10times already?? That's one to think about.

 

[Fella]

Tap water has lower levels of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate than tank water. It looks like you've typed it the other way around...

 

[paulthegreat]

Did any of you notice that it was said that there was still water in the tube from the previous water change? I thought I did. Fetid tank water sitting in a siphon hose for even a day is going to be bad news. I would recomend just buying a gravel vac with a hand pump starter they only cost a few bucks and no fish piss in mouth. Unless of course you have some sort of weird fettish

 

[Dragonscales]

if you don't like getting the water in your mouth then do what I did, buy a battery operated syphon

 

[Griz]

I don't see what could be dangerous about a bit of healthy aquarium water. Are people really worried about fish pee?! Perhaps it's because I spend long periods of time roughing it in the woods on canoe trips where you are sometimes neck deep in swamps and you drink your water where you find it. The only worries we have in that environment are Cryptosporidium and Giardia which are parasites that do not occur in aquarium water. I certainly could be wrong so if someone can give some specifics as to what could be dangerous in tank water from a well maintained tank with healthy fish I would love to know about it, but til then... Cheers!

 

[Dragonscales]

I would recomend just buying a gravel vac with a hand pump starter they only cost a few bucks and no fish piss in mouth. Unless of course you have some sort of weird fettish

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I used to have one of them until the stupid thing packed it in then I brought my battery operated one and haven't looked back (yes, I am lazy when I want to be ).

 

[jfrancho]

I once contracted Vibrio from a tank full of infected recent imports, they might have been puffers. It wasn't from a siphon, water accidentally splashed onto my face and in my nose and mouth. I didn't know that the fish were sick at the time, but later got so sick, I needed to see a doctor. He diagnosed my symptoms as food poisoning from bad oysters. I thought that was odd, since I hadn't eaten oysters recently, then recalled the face full of water. Sure enough, all the fish in that perished a few days later. Anyway, a prescription and some rest took care of it. I'd say when dealing with well est'd tanks a little tank water probably won't hurt you, but better to be safe, and use the scoop or feed method to start a siphon, rather than sucking on the end. When dealing sick fish, wild, or newly acclimated fish, extreme caution is necessary.

 

[benzonar]

I'm sure there are some nasties in the water, but then mix it with a double shot of malt whiskey and it will be fine.

Tip for siphoning


Place the whole tube in the tank so it fills with water, place your thumb over one end awhilst keeping the other end submerged. Transfer the thumbed end into the bucket and then take your thumb off, hey presto no sucking needed.

 

[Synirr]

If you have test kits try this. (assuming you have a healthy & well filtered tank)

1.Measure you tank water for above
2. Measure your tapwater for above.

Unless your'e doing something wrong the tap water will be 10-20 times more polluted than your tank water!!!!

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Where do you get your water from?
My tap and tank water test out as being about the same, which for all practical purposes is 0 for ammonia and nitrites and very, very low nitrates (I do 25%+ water changes weekly). Maybe I just have good water though, our tap comes from a private well

I'm not a germophobe in any sense, and personally, I think that if you're too careful about sanitation you will actually suffer from it. It's well known that each person's skin is covered in their own special colonies of beneficial bacteria (which are familial BTW, passed from mothers to their children), and excessive hand-washing with antibacteria soap or use of those liquid antibacterial things can kill off the good bacteria on your skin. The problem being that those good bacteria help fight off the bad bacteria. Limited exposure to germs and such nasties "trains" your immune system to fight them off more efficiently. That said, I have gotten a mouthful of tank water on many occasions, and several times from my grandmother's tank which doesn't get cleaned for months at a time, and have yet to suffer any ill effects.

Besides, why bother worrying about tank water when your toothbrush probably has small colonies of fecal coliform bacteria (i.e. E. coli) on it?
On the show MythBusters they tested toothbrushes kept in the bathroom and used as normal against a control set of toothbrushes that were sterilized before the experiment began and stored in a kitchen 20 feet away from the bathroom. Both sets of toothbrushes had trace amounts of fecal coliform bacteria.