Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So i have tons of tanks...blah blah blah
and tons of cages with shallow but large water pans
and tons of filters
and a "python" which doesnt work so well
and tons of headaches.
recentely it occured to me that i could simply pump water out of large (but shallow) water pans with a powerhead or pump attached to some pvc or hard tubing. I have made my own filters for tanks and ponds but this never occurred to me before. It seems like a decent pump or powerhead could be attached to appropriate sized pvc and this to a long hose leading to somewhere where water could be (other than my carpets).Has anybody down it? Made a draining device with simple tools? Is there something obvious i am overlooking?

I've done this 2 ways:
1- get a sink drain from Home Despot & find a myriad of attachments to get this down to a size that will fit a stopcock (ball valve). Then you can just turn the valve and let the water drain into a bucket. Carry the bucket over to the toilet & that part is done. Quick wipeout & disinfect, close the stopcock, refill with the bucket you just emptied & refilled while the disinfectant was wroking. Et voila! You're done with that cleaning with no power usage...
2- cut a hole in the floor that is too small for the animal to get through & leave a bucket under neath so the misting system can drain without you having to worry about it. Just squeegee the ig poop through the hole, disinfect & go. Gotta remember to dump & disinfect the bucket regularly though... Gets pretty nasty.

The first one is more difficult and expensive, but, makes cleaning pretty effortless. The second one is easier, but, more "memory intensive" and you burn up more disinfectant...
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Justin, Julie and the meangerie...
(Bobbing igs, snapping macklots, exploring ball, hungry kings, hyper grey rat, quacking tribs, hissing roaches, wriggling worms & chirping crickets)
Vermont Herpetological Society Online
www.vermontherps.org

cool
but i have way more water to drain than can possibly fit in any bucket and the idea is to avoid carrying many buckets of water.
But how does a sinl drain work? I have never seen one.

We actually didn't take a picture of the drain itself. Will have to get a photo of the unit in storage... This one is pretty clumsy and there's probably a better way to mate all the pieces than what we did, but, we made do with what we had... Basically it is a normal kitchen sink drain from Home Despot. Beneath that is short PVC straight pipe. That, in turn mates to a short threaded piece of PVC, which then connects to a 90-degree elbow joint (PVC). That connects to a metal stopcock. That connects to another straight piece of PVC. That connects to a piece of hose.
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----------====================----------
Justin, Julie and the meangerie...
(Bobbing igs, snapping macklots, exploring ball, hungry kings, hyper grey rat, quacking tribs, hissing roaches, wriggling worms & chirping crickets)
Vermont Herpetological Society Online
www.vermontherps.org