A plain tube can be used as a siphon. An external pump has to be applied to start the liquid flowing and prime the siphon (in home use this is often done by a person inhaling through the tube until enough of it has filled with liquid; this may pose danger to the user, depending on the liquid that is being siphoned). This is sometimes done with any leak-free hose to siphon gasoline from a motor vehicles gasoline tank to an external tank. (Siphoning gasoline by mouth often results in the accidental swallowing of gasoline, or aspirating it into the lungs, which can cause death or lung damage.) If the tube is flooded with liquid before part of the tube is raised over the intermediate high point and care is taken to keep the tube flooded while it is being raised, no pump is required. Devices sold as siphons often come with a siphon pump' to start the siphon process.
In some applications it can be helpful to use siphon tubing that is not much larger than necessary. Using piping of too great a diameter and then throttling the flow using valves or constrictive piping appears to increase the effect of previously cited concerns over gases or vapor collecting in the crest which serve to break the vacuum. If the vacuum is reduced too much, the siphon effect can be lost. Reducing the size of pipe used closer to requirements appears to reduce this effect and creates a more functional siphon that does not require constant re-priming and restarting. In this respect, where the requirement is to match a flow into a container with a flow out of said container (to maintain a constant level in a pond fed by a stream, for example) it would be preferable to utilize two or three smaller separate parallel pipes that can be started as required rather than attempting to use a single large pipe and attempting to throttle it.