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Hi all,
Im looking for a way to set up an auto drip system for my Discus tank.
I have a problem though... I want to add pure RO as HMA water from my tap has a ph of 8.2 - too high for my Discus.
I know how the drip systems work but im looking for anyone who adds pure RO to their tank straight from their Ro filter and how they remin the water??
I hope this makes sense?!!
Thanks for any help
Chris
Chris, do you have wilds or domestic?
Reason I ask - if you do a search on ph, you will see articles like this http://www.simplydiscus.com/library/...nochange.shtml
found another good link for you on ph - http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...hlight=ph+high
ph consistency is more important than level... unless we are talking about wilds.
Hi Greg,
Thankyou for the reply. They are domestic fish, bred by Ricky Lim. My ph from my tap is high but its also very hard. GH22, KH7.
I did try keeping my fish in this water but they just showed signs of stress, I am currently using RO, storing in a water butt, heating and adding Discus Remin from Tropic Marin.
Would love to feed fresh water 24/7 into my sump but not sure if anyone does this with RO water.
Thanks
I don't know about the RO direct but it seems to me that if you go direct, when you do water changes, your parameters will go out of whack. Over time your RO is going to concentrate as the water evaporates and is replaced by the constant RO drip. When you do a water change your going to start back with pure tap, then again build up of the RO through evaporation of the tank. I am not a waterologist or an RO expert... just the way my brain works... Might want to wait for some experts to chime in before accepting what I have said above as being correct.
As far as Ph levels, mine comes out of the tap at around 7 and after 24 hours jumps to 8.1. I age 24 hours and then use prime before the change. Keeps it consistent and the fish are happy.
interesting! that makes sense Greg, id love to know too if there was a way to figure it out it has crossed my mind as well but keeping it constant was too critical for me to try with my very inexperienced plumbing skills
Hi Chris
I have tried straight RO drip in to my system a year ago. I had the RO water dripping in to my sump from a night of approximately 15 centimeters in the hope that the co2 content of the raw RO water would escape as soon as the drops hit the water. I'm not sure about this but I dont think it worked. As most people know, raw RO water is very unstable due to its co2 content which would need to be expelled though aging and airation in a separate container. Part of my difficulty might have been caused by the fact that I was using straight RO without any minerals as I thought my wild heckles would have been able to cope with extremely soft water conditions. Anyhow, this didn't work out partly because it was too expensive and waistfull and partly becouse it was too pure. I have noticed an improvement since I've changed the system and started to age the RO water inside a separate water container with heavy airation. I have also started adding equilibrium in very small amounts.
I would have thought that it would be possible to automatically add regular doses of mineral products along with your RO water to your system in accordance with the requirements of your particular strain of discus but the luck of aging and airation and the levels of waste water would still be an issue.
I hope that helps
Tolga
Thanks everyone for the pointers.
I have had another idea and if anyone can simplify it please share.
Basically I was going to run HMA from one unit into my water barrol with a float valve stopping it at around 25% and then an Ro unit filling into the same water barrol but with a float valve near the top so every 24 hours I will have a 25/75 mix heater and ready to go...
Chris
You can avoid the issues that Tankster spoke about by doing a change with all RO water, but you still need to make sure to buffer it.
What are you trying to achieve by doing this RO drop? That's my biggest question to help you achieve what you're looking to do
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Chris,
I run a RO drip into my Amazon tank. I use a dosing pump to remin, and also to add fertilizer for the plants. Works well. Just google dosing pump.
Dosing pumps are one solution (excuse the pun) and store and drip is another. As for pH, discus really don't care about stable pH they are designed to deal with pH changes. As long as the changes are relatively slow they really don't care. In the wild the pH changes daily, and in truth it does in many tanks too (if not most/all), people get too hung up about pH and particularly stable pH.
I believe there are certain re-mineralization filters that might be beneficial. You would run the water through the RO or RODI, and then through a remineralization cartridge which would add back a certain amount of minerals so that you're not adding dangerously pure water to your tank. This one I found seems to be the most comprehensive in terms of adding back the widest range of appropriate minerals, though it does increase the pH by more than what we would be looking to achieve certainly - http://www.aquasafecanada.com/produc...grade-kit.html
Perhaps there is something else like this out there as well which might work, though the other remineralization filters I had seen seemed similar still. Has anyone found a way to therefore use a filter such as this, without requiring multiple RO filters, mixing apparatus, etc?
Hi I have been playing with the idea of using some of the mineral stones that the shrimp hobbyists use to raise the GH whith out raising the ph. apparently, there are these specialist mineral blocks or stones that slowly dissolve and give out calcium and magnesium ions into the water and I was wondering if RO water could be allowed to drip into a cannister containing one or two of these stones on its way to the storage tank. I even thought of experimenting with two canisters: one containing several bags of aquarium peat followed by another containing the mineral stones. the humic acids from peat could assist in the release of the minerals from the stones. If it worked, there won't be any need for dosing pumps or for regular addition of these these essential substances but it all depends on how long it would take for the the substances to be exhausted and whether this can be a consistent and sustainable method in the long term. I might have a go at testing it one of these days.
Tolga
Hi I was wondering what u used to create your gh and kh solutions? how big of a reservoir you used because the minerals need a certain amount of water to dissolve completly? Then how you figured out how much the doseing pump should be putting out for the amount of RO water your dripping into the tank? Please and thank youQuote:
Originally Posted by Frankr409
My grow out system is designed for a drip system, but I don't use it as of right now. I built it that way in case I had a large number of fish, and would be out of town, I could run the drip system continually while I was gone to maintain Water quality. My system is in my basement, and concists of 6-75 gallon tanks with a 150 gallon wet/dry sump. I have a high water level overflow in my sump, a 2" pvc drain, that runs to a nearby sump pump. In my garage upstairs I have a 300 gallon polyethylene storage tank that I can mix my water in, normally 80% RO water, 20% tap water, and I can gravity feed it into the system in the basement. All the excess water goes over the high limit overflow in the sump, and out to the sump pump. No need to preheat the water, at a quick drip, the system's heaters can maintain the heat no problem. If you needed to preheat the water, you could install a small electric tankless heater that the water drains through, but they use a great deal of electricity, and likely aren't needed. It would be better to increase the heaters in the system instead.
I have a float switch in the storage tank, so I could run pure RO water non stop and have someone periodically add a dry remineralizing additive to the tank if needed while I was gone.
-Leland
yep i use a pH doser to dose filtered tap into the tank to maintain pH and as a by product manage TDS.