Well water and Discus

[Jeff_Hart]

I am looking for input on those that have to deal with converting (usually hard) well water to "Discus" water in high volumes. I have my ways and it works great, but I am looking for a more efficient way of doing this. Heating cold well water; is obviously expensive. I do use a different method of creating "breeding water"....

Please don't respond with adding chemicals and things like that, I blow through. 800 gallons per day of RO water a day

[ktm4us6]

You might laugh, but I heat my 500g tank with outside wood boiler, heat the house, hot tub and hot water supply. Plus stay in shape cutting wood lol;)

[Chicago Discus]

You might laugh, but I heat my 500g tank with outside wood boiler, heat the house, hot tub and hot water supply. Plus stay in shape cutting wood lol;)


And I thought I worked hard Dam..........Josie

[ktm4us6]

;) Hey I'm cheap.

[Jeff_Hart]

That seems like a great idea! It is another option that I can look at as I have property and I heat some with a regular wood burner now.

I am thinking about installing another regular residential hot water heater just to heat the RO water with propane instead of tons of electric heaters. Most "city water" people don't understand how easy they have it compared to the "well water" people.

[ktm4us6]

Just remember when you heat and store water there's more chances of bacteria problems.

[Jeff_Hart]

Interesting point, I wonder how much bacteria would really be in well water to start with. I know it wouldn't take much to start a "culture" but I am using 500 plus gallons of RO water a day now which shouldn't give it much time to get out of control.

[ktm4us6]

From what i read keeping temp over 140 deg kills bacteria. Every six months I raise my temp in my water heater to 140+ deg for about 4 hrs then lower the temp again, I always do it when kids are at school. You would be better to try some way to heat your lines just before they go into the tank. You might be able to rap your water lines around some hot water pipes a bunch of times would help. Just an option. I heat my tank with water tubing from my wood boiler and have 1/2" tubing coiled in my sump. I use an electronic controller to keep the temp correct. This setup is just temporary until i'm able to heat my fish room to my tank temperature.

[Northwoods Discus]

How about a tankless water heater in line from your r/o or in circulation of your holding tank?

[jimg]

From what i read keeping temp over 140 deg kills bacteria. Every six months I raise my temp in my water heater to 140+ deg for about 4 hrs then lower the temp again, I always do it when kids are at school. You would be better to try some way to heat your lines just before they go into the tank. You might be able to rap your water lines around some hot water pipes a bunch of times would help. Just an option. I heat my tank with water tubing from my wood boiler and have 1/2" tubing coiled in my sump. I use an electronic controller to keep the temp correct. This setup is just temporary until i'm able to heat my fish room to my tank temperature. I think you would be better off shocking your system with bleach every so often. well or city water. this way you can get all pipes and tanks. I do it to my house.

[ktm4us6]

I use bleach also. I live in a flood plain and have to keep very close eye on my water. Thanks to the fish hobby i realized my nitrates were over 100 (not safe for drinking), the well was only put in 5 yrs ago, but do to the flooding we had, they sky rocketed. I just got in a Tds meter so I can keep a close eye on my water.
Jeff I just had to install a bigger heater in my tank, I added discus to one of my 30g and raised the temp up from 79 to 85, and when i added water to my tank (I add it slow) the heater didn't keep up. So I definitely know what your saying.

[shoveltrash]

Most "city water" people don't understand how easy they have it compared to the "well water" people.amen brother!

>500 gallons of RO per day???? wow. makes my 50-100g a day seem inconsequential :laugh:
storing water, I still swear by my in-water barrel UV unit to kill wee beasties. I'm guessing that's not efficient for a large capacity though.


How about a tankless water heater in line from your r/o or in circulation of your holding tank?+1

[LGelb]

I am looking for input on those that have to deal with converting (usually hard) well water to "Discus" water in high volumes. I have my ways and it works great, but I am looking for a more efficient way of doing this. Heating cold well water; is obviously expensive. I do use a different method of creating "breeding water"....

Please don't respond with adding chemicals and things like that, I blow through. 800 gallons per day of RO water a day

Jeff what is your method for creating breeding water.

lance

[Jeff_Hart]

Thank you all fornthe input.
Thanks for all of the suggestions and comments!*

I was contemplating the tankless water heater; the concern I had was the relatively low flow rate of my RO system verses an "on demand" situation for homes or cabins which would use a small tankless heater. I would think the tankless would have to run continuously. Using a tankless in a continuous loop so to speak for a holding tank sounds to be a great option, I would think this would allow at least some cycling of the heater.

Using bleach to disinfect is an another idea I like, as horrible as it is I know well drillers will use bleach to get there newly drilled wells to "pass" health department regulations. After that the home owner is on there own.

I use an Evolution 1000 for my RO unit which leaves some nutrients or hardness in the water, so it's not a true RO unit. Using this unit I do not mix too much well water, some times none.

For breeding water I use a 100 gallon per day "true" RO unit that takes TDS to the low 20's. I flow the water fast to alleviate PH fluctuations, but when they are ready to spawn all water flow is stopped.... That is for another thread

[donimal28]

Jeff, I don't mean to hijack your thread here, but I have a question regarding well water so I thought it would be appropriate to post here. Let me know if you think I should start a new thread.

I'm new to the forum and brand new to discus keeping. So new that I haven't even got beyond the research stage!

In my old house I had city water and everything was OK for my 75 gallon community tank with mostly Angel fish with 20-25% weekly water changes. No problems at all over 10 years.

I moved into a new house and I'm looking to set up a new tank. I have a 200 gallon 90" by 30" by 20" tall tank with a wet/dry filter that I bought used. The filter is running to keep the bacteria alive, but there aren't any fish in the tank. My goal is to have a lightly planted discus community tank with 6-10 discus and some cory's, cardinal tetras, bristlenose and maybe a couple rams.

I've been doing A LOT of research lately on discus but I'm having trouble finding information on using well water that has a water softener. The majority of what I've found says not to use the softened/treated water because the salt content is too high. I have no problem bypassing the filter, but how do I know if my "raw" water is safe?

When I bought the house the lab tests showed the following -
The raw water has a pH of 5.53 and lead is 40.7 ug/L, everything else is in acceptable range. (Acceptable human range for lead is less than 5ug/L)
The treated water has a pH of 7.29 but the sodium content is 36.2 mg/L. This sodium level is acceptable for humans, but what about freshwater fish? Especially discus?

I haven't been able to find any information on acceptable levels of lead or sodium. What do you guys think? Am I screwed with too high lead in the raw and too high sodium in the treated water? Are my aspirations of keeping discus dead in the water? (pun intended!)

I'm trying to avoid buying RO equipment. But if I have to use RO, would I use the RO on the raw or treated water?

Any information you could provide is GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks,

-Don

[shoveltrash]

Don if you do an advanced search you'll find some info here on the forum addressing this ;)
my experience.....
I have well water.
and a whole house water softener.
'went thru a LOT of grief until deciding to install a 100gpd RO unit (one that cycles the softened water to decrease the number of filters I have to replace!). now my Discus are wonderful and I have no worries. however MY well water is horrid, with TDS upwards of 500, pH of 9+, tons of iron, iron bacteria, etc.
I'm not familiar with ug/L & mg/L measurements -- so not sure how your water compares except that your pH is lots lower!

hope this helps somehow?

[donimal28]

It does help some. I will keep searching the threads for more info on this.

Thanks for the reply!

-Don

[Jeff_Hart]

I agree with Trish, I really could not do anything with these fish without RO water.

Anyway for more input I would start a new thread, if all we did on these forums were to do searches there wouldn't be much point in a "discussion forum", and if you don't type in the right keywords for the search etc. I get frustrated sometimes doing searches; I know the information is here it's just hard to find sometimes.