Drip System.

[afriend]

Interesting. I guess Devil is in the detail with Discus! Thanks for all the advice. I'm looking forward to getting my half dozen! Little nervous about the time that's needed to Discus but I'm the type of person that you do it proper or not at all.

I don't know how much research you have done on keeping discus, so please excuse me if you already know the following. It is much harder to raise juvenile fish than adults. Thus my recommendation is to begin with adults (5 inch and over). Adults are much more tolerant of water conditions because their immune system is more developed. Also, it is very important to start with healthy fish. My recommendation is to purchase them from one of the suppliers in the sponsors list of the Simply Discus forum.

Please don't make the same mistakes I made when I first started. Spend allot of time researching the SD forum before jumping in.

[CANAMONSTER]

I don't know how much research you have done on keeping discus, so please excuse me if you already know the following. It is much harder to raise juvenile fish than adults. Thus my recommendation is to begin with adults (5 inch and over). Adults are much more tolerant of water conditions because their immune system is more developed. Also, it is very important to start with healthy fish. My recommendation is to purchase them from one of the suppliers in the sponsors list of the Simply Discus forum.

Please don't make the same mistakes I made when I first started. Spend allot of time researching the SD forum before jumping in.

Thank you for the post. I see what you mean about the Drip. I will definitely be getting 4 inchers in stead of 2 inchers. I'll see if I could get larger.

It's hard to imagine that all you Discus keepers that grow big beautiful Discus can also manage a family house hold lol.

[Hart24601]

The answer to this question depends on what the assumptions are. That's because there is more to cleaning a tank than just changing water. If the discussion is based just on water change alone, then the following link is helpful in comparing the efficiency between the two methods:

http://www.angelfish.net/DripSystemcalc.php

Here's some representative data from the above link for a 100 g tank (rounded to the nearest gallon).

10g drip results in 10g replaced
20g drip results in 18g replaced
35g drip results in 30g replaced
70g drip results in 50g replaced
95g drip results in 61g replaced

Thus if one is willing to accept a decrease in efficiency then the drip system can be utilized to accomplish the same benefit proving that other tank maintenance is also performed. There are also other considerations such as treating the new water.

A clean tank depends on more than just water change. It is also important to remove the uneaten food and feces at the bottom of the tank. The drip method does nothing to accomplish this while the displacement method accomplishes both at the same time (assuming its done in the proper manner). It is also important to perform other tasks such as wiping down the glass and cleaning other objects in the tank.

Assuming that a tank has an overflow pipe, the drip method can result in much less work. For example, suppose one has a 100g tank and it is desired to replace 30g daily. First remove the uneaten food and feces by syphoning 5g off the tank bottom. Then set up the drip method to place 35g of new water in the tank over a 24 hour period. This new water does not have to be preheated since the tank heater can do the job. Removing 5g of old water each day is considerably easier than handling and heating 30g each day.

Good summary! Here is the math behind the those figures. I wrote this before, so I will copy and paste, the article is:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/



From that I did the math on my personal tank and system. I use an apex with DOS pump that add 60g per day over 143 pumping periods. Not exactly a drip system, but close!

From that article 1 60% waterchange is a 60% reduction in levels (1-(0.4)^1)=60%.
The apex runs 143 times a day. So that gives (1-(.9958)^143)=54%.
So the single 60% WC is 6% more efficient. However, say you were to break that 60% daily WC into 30% in the morning and 30% in the evening. Still 60% overall, but that drops the efficiency even closer to the AWC levels.


Personally for detritus I just have a small hose and siphon out a couple gallons every night from the bare bottom. I don't have to refill anything because the system will add the water back in. I have as sump that contains a drain line to the floor drain. Drip systems are pretty common for large scale fish breeding operations.