Cleaning the lily pipes can become a watery mess without some of the tips I’ve implemented in my setup. I have my lily pipe hosing routed into my cabinet with multiple ways to shutoff the water to make disconnecting them quick and relatively easy.
The first is using a filter that comes with an adjustable flow control built into the inlet and outlet. One of the pictures below shows this function on my Oase BioMaster Thermo 250 Canister Filter. Turning this to the ‘unlock’ position will allow you to pop off the hosing directly from the filter with little mess. Use a rag to catch any drops though.
I can also disconnect my pipes further up the hosing to make cleaning the lily pipes much simpler if I don’t want to mess with the entire filter line. For this, I use a set of Eheim Double Tap Connectors. Also pictured above, the double taps are on both the inlet and outlet hoses. This allows me to shutoff the water closer to where the hoses go out of my cabinet, making removal of the lily pipes quick and easy.