Home Depot or Lowes has flexible tubing for a decent price, well worth the money to save all that effort.
I did 50G water changes for a while with buckets that I hauled upstairs to dump, then filled with NSW, then pumped slowly back in to the DT, not fun.
This is what I do now:
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=87648