Adding water
Ready, steady, water – here’s how to pour in water without destroying your aquarium decorations
The bigger your aquarium the sooner will you want to fill your aquarium with a hose directly from the water tap. JBL has a water withdrawal and refill system in its range where, during a partial water change, you can even siphon water and afterwards refill your aquarium in no time ( JBL Aqua In Out kompletní sada ). This works, even if your aquarium is positioned lower than your washbasin!
Alternatively you can, of course, use water buckets – but only if you haven’t used any cleaning agents in the bucket. Even pouring the water from the bucket into your aquarium is trickly, as you don’t want to disturb your aquarium design.
Putting a plate or spreading a plastic bag over the aquarium content will help you to protect your equipment against the water jet and to slowly fill your aquarium. A filter fleece ( JBL Symec VL ). You may use slightly tempered water. Check the temperature with an aquarium thermometer and adjust to 24-26 °C.
Since your tap water is not always ideal for your aquarium dwellers, we advise a water conditioner ( JBL Biotopol ), which neutralises harmful substances, such as chloride and heavy metals from your tap water to transform it to aquarium water.
In addition to JBL Biotopol, there are also some special variants for special requirements: If you keep shrimps/crayfish, you should use JBL Biotopol C (Crustacea = crustaceans), as this water conditioner contains minerals for the moulting of crustaceans instead of mucous membrane protection for fish and has significantly more chelators which can bind copper. For goldfish lovers, there is JBL Biotopol R (Red), a special form of water conditioner that contains eyebright extract and thus optimally protects the fish in cold water.
When and how exactly do you use water conditioner?
If you use a bucket to carry out your partial water change it’s simple: always add your dose of water conditioner to the bucket, e.g. for the 10 l bucket contents. However, if you are using a hose, add your dose of water conditioner to the aquarium after the siphoning and BEFORE you add new water. This way, harmful substances from the tap water, such as chlorine or lead, can be directly bound before they cause any damage. For shrimps and invertebrates, however, this method may prove fatal, since they must NOT come into contact with existing copper from the tap water. If you have these creatures, only the bucket method is possible, because any copper in the bucket is bound by the water conditioner BEFORE it enters the aquarium.
Inserting aquarium plants and adding the water. Here’s how!
How are aquarium plants correctly inserted? What can you do about plants that won’t stay in the soil and keep floating up? How do you add the water without disturbing your arrangement?