Agree. Some of the plumbing use to leak because of improper glue/seal but not anymore. Must have been sealed by the debris!
I use 1.5 inch PVC plumbing on some of my tanks and it still takes around a minute to drain a 60G.
Stan Chung
simple but not easy
This is my setup....Uses 24VDC valves & pump. I have one 3/8 line tee'd to the outlet of my canister filter. I open the drain valve and the canister pump pushes the water out at a rate of ~2.5 l/min...Closing the drain valve I open up a fill valve and turn a small pump on and it fills at about 1.5 l/min. I know its slow however its fully automated now and I do not heat the outside water. Water temperature only changes by 0.5 degrees. SO one line running outside connected to two solenoid valves and a small pump and you've got it. The pump is from a water filter system designed to pressurize water through the RO membrane. This has NEVER clogged as its tee'd into the outlet of the canister the water is very clean with no debrea .
You can checkout the automation on http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...t=58638&page=2
this is the two solenoids Drain / Fill with the small pump..all is 24VDC. You can see the manual isolation valve top LHS...this is the line that goes to the aquarium. Drain valve is turned ON int he pic... As I have very soft water in Australia no need for RO, I just use a carbon block filter in the outside unit as you can see.