Aquascaper 600

[Wills]

@seangee uses a kettle

Calculating volume required to change temp

Geek question alert :rofl: Is this a simple arithmetic calculation (as long as you are using litres and celcius ;))? I usually stand my vats in a sink of hot water till they reach the right temperature. Today I have to change all 4 tanks so I thought I'd short cut by using a kettle of RO water...

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It appears i am over complicating it as usual

 

[Wills]

MD's water is better than mine. Still he has problems with BGA on his discus tank. This is a sign of issues with his water. It only requires slight issues to cause these problems. The reason why I recommend RO/DI is so you can have soft water and control what goes into it. You start with a clean slate.

I have one of those white 105 litre water containers that I occasionally top up every night. Overnight I can make about 50 - 70 litres. I decant the water from this from time to time for top ups in my tanks. If I'm doing a water change I'll fill it full for use later on.

My house is naturally warm, so even though fresh RO water is cold, over the course of a few days it warms up to the surrounding temperature. In my setup it's about a 3 - 4 degrees colder than the main tank temperature (I'm running 25 celsius for my planted tank), the fish don't really mind, it only pulls the temperature down about 1.5 degrees considering the percentage of water I'm changing.

Since you're only doing 40 or 15 litres a time I'd just boil some RO water in a kettle and use it to raise the temperature in the mixing container. If you need your storage container to be warmer consider cladding it in insulation or something. Again this is a question of quantity, so just use some common sense.

If you really want to raise temperature on a water storage tank then I would look into getting baulkhead fittings so I can plumb a pump line to the container (my water storage container comes with one as standard that I don't use), you can then run a circulation pump and buy one of those inline heaters, so you won't need a glass heater in the storage tank touching the plastic with the possibility of melting it. It's for this reason I don't recommend thermofilters like the Oase since inline heaters are available - why waste filter media space? Personally I don't like heating large water storage containers because it can cost a lot in electricity.

Water change on my 360 litre planted tank consists of draining the 105 litres out of it and then pumping the 105 litres from the water container via a eheim 1048 pump. 30 minutes tops. I then add the water hardeners, GH and KH. That's it.

RO units you can get anywhere, you can even ask your local aquatic shop. I use RO Man or Osmotics. Units are less than £100 if you want a non under sink model. I use RO water for drinking and cooking purposes too.

Yep all makes sense I can even buy a little kettle to keep it limescale free as Im pretty sure our house kettle is a bit too scaley haha. This feels like a workable option, last issue I have is that I have dicky knees so getting jerry cans of water up stairs from the basement could be problematic but the exercise will do me good.

I have most of the other equipment you mentioned so can continue using all of that as part of the normal water change.

When you said about adding the hardners do you do that to the tank after adding the RO or is it in the bucket before?

Wills

 

[mbsqw1d]

Don't suppose there's an option of drilling a hole down to the basement from near your tank? Get a decent pump and Bob's your uncle!

 

[Wills]

Don't suppose there's an option of drilling a hole down to the basement from near your tank? Get a decent pump and Bob's your uncle!

I wish tank is in the dining room at the back and the basement only goes under the lounge at the front. Basement is earmarked as a fish room at some point but thats a long way off.

 

[Advanced Aquarist]

I use to use the storage container to harden the water in but stopped doing that. I found that it took some time for the salts to dissolve and also over weeks I had accumulations at the bottom of the container. Additionally this meant that I couldn't use the water in it for top offs since it's not 0 TDS.

I think it's best practice to always have the large storage container as pure as possible. All hardening should be done with the decanted water, that way there is no confusion and you won't run into over hardening or under hardening because you either forgot or overdone the salts into it (this can of course be prevented by regularly testing the water but that's just too much work for a container that you use all the time). So I keep my storage container as straight RO/DI water.

I say RO/DI because RO is NOT enough. It's still going to be about 3 - 6 TDS out of the RO unit and you want to take the remainder off. That's where the DI comes in, but you got to be careful here. I once exhausted my DI resin without knowing and this let in a fair amount of silicates into my planted tank that resulted in a brown algae outbreak. On investigating it turned out that the output water from the RO unit was very high in CO2 and this can exhaust DI resins quickly. So now I'll have to gas out the CO2 in the storage container via an air stone or a powerhead and then push that through the DI!

 

[Advanced Aquarist]

I wish tank is in the dining room at the back and the basement only goes under the lounge at the front. Basement is earmarked as a fish room at some point but thats a long way off.

You're very lucky to have a basement. Most homes in the UK don't. It's common in the US though.

 

[PheonixKingZ]

You're very lucky to have a basement. Most homes in the UK don't. It's common in the US though.

I don’t have one...

 

[Wills]

Just a bit of maintance tonight but I like how its looking - I'm starting to get the valley shape I wanted at the back with the plants so hopefully as they keep growing it will fill in more and more. At some point I probably need to take out the back right corner as the plantlets I put in there are now a bit crowded.

Algae issue is still present, not sure the excell is working but it looks like its going white where as before it was much darker. I think it goes white then dies and goes red? Not sure.

Going to start work on my basement this weekend to clear it of the rubbish that got dumped down there and get it ready to put in an RO unit. I think this is the way forward for both tanks

 

[Wills]

2 weeks since the last water change and I'm out of Co2 too so you can see plants are a bit pale and some hefty algae issues developing. Should bounce back somewhat when I change the canister at the weekend.

RO plans have taken a step forward, got the area ready to instal the unit. Mrs Wills wants to turn it into a full utility area which will take a while but I need to get the unit in asap as its just a futile battle against algae with this water and moving to RO will dictate what fish I keep so need to take that step asap.

 

[seangee]

@Wills unable to attach pics to the PM - so here they are

 

[Advanced Aquarist]

2 weeks since the last water change and I'm out of Co2 too so you can see plants are a bit pale and some hefty algae issues developing. Should bounce back somewhat when I change the canister at the weekend.

On a tank like this you need very little CO2, how many bubbles per minute were you using?

Lack of CO2 doesn't necessarily induce algae. It can as a secondary consequence - but a LACK of it does not always cause algae.

You have algae on your rocks. You can scrub them or what you implement will starve them so they fade away . . .

 

[Wills]

On a tank like this you need very little CO2, how many bubbles per minute were you using?

Lack of CO2 doesn't necessarily induce algae. It can as a secondary consequence - but a LACK of it does not always cause algae.

You have algae on your rocks. You can scrub them or what you implement will starve them so they fade away . . .

I was doing 1-2 bps but its been difficult to balance with lights and ferts. I've sort of given up for now if I'm really honest. I just want to get my RO unit set up which Sean is helping with above

I think the algae build up is because the plants are just sustaining rather than actively growing right now so there are even more opportunities for algae to grow right now. Once I get the Co2 back on and start dosing ferts I should be able to get back to where I was or improve on it I got some new wire brushes this week and some dental picks and going to notch up my assault on the Staghorn with pure peroxide.

In other news, while getting my replacement canister set up I've managed to break my diffuser. When its been sat in water a while without gas pumping through it fills a bit with water which makes it hard to get gas back out. While unscrewing it to do this the head unscrewed from the pipes resulting in me being screwed haha as it wont re-screw and make a seal so when I turned the gas on big bubbles just came out from this joint. New one ordered tonight from Horizon Aquatics should be here this week - ordered a spare too incase it happens again. Will be good to swap the ceramic stones over from time to time too.

Wills

 

[Advanced Aquarist]

I was doing 1-2 bps but its been difficult to balance with lights and ferts. I've sort of given up for now if I'm really honest

That's the thing you see. Have you've ever considered that the key is that you DON'T need to "balance" them. All these "experts" saying this and that when they haven't got a clue - nor seem to follow their own advice!

The ferts are the most important factor, and they have to be tailored to your water and plants. There is no one size fits all unfortunately, hence so many fertilisers on the market. If you make your own you control what goes in.

CO2 isn't even required at 30 mg/l (green on drop checker). I would go so far as to say that it's detrimental to having such a high CO2 level. If you look closely at the videos on YouTube of all those so called "experts" running their tank at green on their drop checkers you'll notice that their fish breathe rather heavily!!! I'm running 360 litres with 1.5 bps. There is no need for you to run even 1 bps on your setup, you can manage with 0.25 bps (one bubble every 4 seconds!).

You need to do a slow transition to RO/DI hardened water.

Also you want to make your own ferts so you can control what gets put in and, more important, at what quantity. Most all in one ferts have too much iron in them and that's detrimental - and it causes a lot of algae issues.

Is this an Oase canister filter you're using?

 

[Wills]

I need to understand what the tank will be like with RO better. I need to get my head around which brand of salts to get and work out what fish I want hilariously its been so far down the list lol. I think I basically want to get slightly soft to neutral ph of about 6.8 and gh of something like 8/10?

When I've been looking at the RO units I cant work out what the difference is between RO and RO/DI? Should I go for the DI bit not sure if its possitive or negative?

Open to mixing my own ferts but my impression of it is that its expensive? But I imagine you're going to tell me different haha!

Pic from tonight after clean - hard trim on the right due to algae growth. Left side looking good though the Limnophilla is filling in nice at the back. Some of the right side is a bit beyond saving now so ordered a few new plants tonight to fill some gaps and replace some.

 

[Wills]

Oh and yes - running an Oase Biomaster 250 for 900lph. Cant see an issue with this, but imagine you're going to tell me there is...