Ro Newbie

T1KARMANN

Fish Gatherer
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i was just wondering would it be possable to run a RO unit on your tank water then use a dosing pump to add minerals

surely this would purify you tank water if you had it on a timer for say 12hrs per day

will this harm your fish in anyway
 
I imagine you would have to get the dosing right T1KARMANN. as the filter degrades with time it might be hard to gauge the mineral additives. Are you looking at some sort of automated waterchange device using RO.
Regards
BigC
 
I imagine you would have to get the dosing right T1KARMANN. as the filter degrades with time it might be hard to gauge the mineral additives. Are you looking at some sort of automated waterchange device using RO.
Regards
BigC

not a auto water change just using a RO unit on say a 4hr cycle per day to clear out all the nitrates from the water
 
Ah! I think I get what you mean. You want to pump the aquarium water through a RO unit and add minerals back using a dosing pump.
If so where's your waste water going. You would have more waste than stock water. Why dont you use a fluidised nitrate reactor such as Deltec, like marine aquarists do.
Regards
BigC
 
Ah! I think I get what you mean. You want to pump the aquarium water through a RO unit and add minerals back using a dosing pump.
If so where's your waste water going. You would have more waste than stock water. Why dont you use a fluidised nitrate reactor such as Deltec, like marine aquarists do.
Regards
BigC

used a nitrate reactor before i thought it was crap

i dont mind emptying 1 bucket of water per day
 
The trouble with the idea is that the R/O filter will remove water volume from the tank, for every 2 litres of water filtered at least 1 litre is waste water that goes down a drain. If you are running say a 50 gallon per day unit for 4 hours a day then you are going to lose 3 or 4 gallons of water from the tank every time you run it.
The other problem is going to be achieving enough water pressure to get the R/O filter to work, the membranes need the water forced onto them at mains water pressure and in some areas they even need a booster pump set up on the incoming main to get the pressure up high enough, so to run one on a tank you will need a very large powerfull pump.

How about setting one up on a constant drip & drain system ? If you ran an R/O unit off the mains 24 hours a day and had a small hole drilled in the tank to act as an overflow to take excess volume away to a drain so the tank doesnt over fill you would effectively have a constant water change going on, you would just have to add a small ammount of trace elements to the tank every couple of days, although i'm sure that i've seen a 7 day auto dosing pump somewhere, Eheim prehaps?
 
I've seen people use old IV infusion pumps set up on a timer for auto water changers, adding dechlor to straight tap water.
 

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