Water, water, pure water

[itiwhetu]

An Idea

A. Is the display tank
B. Is a storage container
C. Is a Biomass Filter. Filled with the correct gravel, plants and other material for your tank.

Weekly you take 50% of your water from your tank (A) put it into (B) remove 40% of that water
and replace with town supply.
Fill (A) with water from (C), then fill (C) with (B). Now let it sit for a week before doing it again.

With this system you would be recycling your water, replacing it and you would not need to use any dechlorinates.

 

[Lynnzer]

Just another thought.....
I was in Lidl last week and they had the 100ltr butts for £19.99.
I got mine at Home Bargains for, I think, £25.99.

 

[itiwhetu]

Just another thought.....
I was in Lidl last week and they had the 100ltr butts for £19.99.
I got mine at Home Bargains for, I think, £25.99.

Perfect for the above system as (B)

 

[AbbeysDad]

I think you will find that most commercial fish breeding establishments use Well water, so their freshwater is only water that has passed through a gravel substrate for a period. If that Well is directly under their fish room, you may find that the old water is mixing with the new.

Not so. wells tap into the aquifer and are not tainted by waste water systems.

 

[itiwhetu]

Not so. wells tap into the aquifer and are not tainted by waste water systems.

You hope

 

[Guyb93]

I’m struggling to understand this thread a little I don’t know weather i just live a privileged existence but I can’t fathom people having drinking water that is worse quality than a fish tank , surely nobody has tap water that has nh3 and if they do why keep fish ? Doesn’t make sense to disadvantage your self , like mountain climbing I’m flip flops

 

[itiwhetu]

I’m struggling to understand this thread a little I don’t know weather i just live a privileged existence but I can’t fathom people having drinking water that is worse quality than a fish tank , surely nobody has tap water that has nh3 and if they do why keep fish ? Doesn’t make sense to disadvantage your self , like mountain climbing I’m flip flops

Some of the members on this forum site have such bad water that they struggle with regular water changes, I'm trying to establish an escape route for those members.

 

[AbbeysDad]

You hope

And so should you...where does your drinking water come from? Deep wells most often provide the purest water...even more so than lakes and reservoirs where many towns and cities get their water.

 

[itiwhetu]

And so should you...where does your drinking water come from? Deep wells most often provide the purest water...even more so than lakes and reservoirs where many towns and cities get their water.

I'm lucky now my water comes from the sky, hits the roof of our house, and is then stored in concrete tanks. We have about 19K liters available all the time. That has not always been the case and I have at times struggled with bad town supply, even then I set up rainwater collection systems and when that wasn't possible, I played with other ideas to provide my fish with decent quality water.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Neq York City has been known for the quality of it's tap water for many years. Most of it comes from 3 reservoir systems north of the city. I live at the lower end of one of them. When I started with fish my tap was pH 7.3, GH was 5-6dg and KH 4-5dg. About a decade later it had changed some and has mostly been constant since. 7.0 pH, GH 4-5dg, KH 3-4dg. I was alerted to the change by a gal who came here and took away some of my well water. She had a TDS meter which she put into one of my tanks and said my TDS was 83 ppm. I basically have soft neutral water.

1 dg - 17.8 ppm, so my GH at 4-5dg would be 71-89 ppm. But my tap contains some other things for sure. It has iron for sure. And once in my tanks it has nitrate in non-planted tanks and ferts and Excel in planted ones. It has some amount of dissolved organics. But the most interstiing thng is that excess rain ir lack of rain can change the TDS. Of course I got my own TDS meter and I tested my tap one day which happened to be shortly after a spell of a lot of heavy rainfall over a 10-12 day period. The TDS was 53 ppm. This did not last.

 

[AbbeysDad]

I'm lucky now my water comes from the sky, hits the roof of our house, and is then stored in concrete tanks.

I tried collecting rain water from the roof, but even with a heavy rain, the water had a yellowish tint to it...but then it's an asphalt shingled roof with enough road traffic in the northeast US (acid rain?) to make it pretty much unusable. You almost need to be in the wilderness with a metal roof to collect good rain water.

I used to have very high nitrates in my well water most likely due to the 95 acre farmers field across the road where I believe they once used ample amounts of chemical fertilizer. (I remember years ago a young farm hand once told me they wouldn't be able to grow anything without ample amounts of fertilizer).

Then I got lucky and a different farm leased the field and they only use manure instead of chemical ferts to fertilize the fields. Now they spray this $hit outta huge tanker trucks so a couple of times a year the air quality goes down but the water is much better for the aquariums (so I stopped filtering through API Nitra-Zorb to remove nitrates). Still, all of our drinking water is store bought in 3g jugs that go on a crock.

I have to believe that most water supplies are suitable for drinking and as such would be fine for aquariums. Oh it may be hard or soft and have nitrates in agricultural areas, but if suitable for drinking, it's suitable for the aquarium sometimes with, but often without, additives or processing (like RO filtration or what I used to do to remove nitrates e.g. My Nitrate Fight).