Water bridge for added water volume ? Yes or no ?

[Candydiscus]

I have alot of aquariums, about 8 of them.. But all of em are 55g and under, the biggest is my 92g corner with my discus in my bedroom. I have a 55g,44 pentagon,30g, 27g hex, and then bunch of smaller tanks.

I've been on a mission latetly to keep the nitrates down in my 92g discus tank, i simply grow tired of daily to every 2 days 80% water changes, and its really killing my water bill. I have so far removed the substrate i originally had which was a floramax original. I rather like the colors it had, reason i removed it is i figured it was just a nitrate factory being 2 years old. I never siphoned it for 2 years because i had alot of aquarium plants.. At first i removed the plants and driftwood and siphoned the crap out of it, for 2 days.. its was fairly clean.. then i put the plants back in.. But with this gravel and its orangine/red/black color it hides foods, waste, everything i also have these little cone shaped pest snails.. They dont get big like malaysian trumpets.. they stay the size of a pencil tip and are cone shaped.. And im sure i had thousands of em in the tank as my sponged always felt crunchy with em crawling in there.

So i decided to just completetly remove the substrate, and i switched to black sand. Obviously this didnt remove all the snails.. but it got rid of 95% of them, and with black sand i do daily vacuumes now of maybe 10% of my water just to remove the waste thats on top of it. With a corner tank like mine i have flow in the tank moving in a circular motion. All the food and waste that doesnt get eatin or picked up by the filters naturally flows in the middle of the tank due to the circular shape and motion of the tank and water flow.. Its actually really cool and makes it super easy to clean. Anyway, cleaned the canister top to bottom as they become nitrate factories (even though i use a sponge on the inlet to keep food and waste out).. Everything i did helped alot.. Nitrates are now more stable.. 2-3 days and they are still orangish on the API test.. Of course the API liquid test sucks because 5-10-20 all the look identicle to me. Maybe 5 is a tad lighter.. But with 2-3PPM nitrates in my city tap water itll always read 5ppm no matter what.. So i safely assume nitrates are around 10-20. Whats odd is the master kit nitrate colors 5-20 are near identicle and on the single kit 20 is red and 10 is orange lol.. API XXXXXX whatever..

Anyway. Sorry for making this so long.. I also have add'd 3 bags of Nitra Zorb from API.. This stuff works great.. 4 days in and nitrates are still light orange to orange so still 5-20ppm. Usually itd be red.. However these packs are only good for 2 months and very expensive. I also have made a denitrate/matric reactor.. it holds 3L total and flow is 28-33GPH using the outlet of my canister split two ways, one going to the tank one to the reactors (to cut flow).. Im hoping in a month or so the bacteria that eat nitrates grow and actually do something.. well see.

On top of all i have done.. my main question is would a Water bridge be something i should look into ? I currently have the 27g hex in my room already and it along with the 44g pentagon are the only tanks the same height as the 92g (28 inches tall and you need the same height tanks for a water bridge siphon)... Nothing is in it really. some guppies i would remove, my betta, and a bristlenose pleco.. I was thinking of cleaning the tank really good, removing the substrate and washing it good to remove any nitrate creating waste on it.. (floramax black) and then putting all my water lillies in it. It has alot already but these red lilly plants eat nitrates like crazy, same with the water sprite if i dont remove it and just let it grow wild. So putting this 27g next to the 92g and putting a pvc pipe in the two to make a water bridge.. and just put the flow from my denitrate reactors into the 27g thus combined both tanks water volume for a total of 120g.. You think 27g more water would help dillute nitrates ? along with high light and all those plants in the 27g. Or is it not worth it ? Idealy i would want to use my 44g pentagon, for nearly 140g of water.. But my mom uses it for her two angle fish and i dont think shed like if i moved it lol

[bluelagoon]

Something new here for me.What is a water bridge?What kind of bacteria eat nitrates?How big are your discus? How old are they and how many in the tank.Left over food is an over feeding isssue.Decaying plant matter is another issue,even tho plants use nitrates.It all adds to the bio load.

[Neptune]

ya what's a water bridge?
Also explain your denitrate/matrix reactor.

Thanks.

[Kyla]

if u want the benefit of plants but dont want the gravel, i would recommend adding a ton of cut pothos vines to ur discus tank. they will send roots straight into the tank and suck up lots of nitrates. cant get around wc tho, u still need them even if ur nitrates are low.

[RogueDiscus]

I think OP described the WB: just a u-shaped length of pvc used to connect the two (3?) tanks. They would siphon together and create a larger volume system. With that in mind, the last paragraph question is clearer.

[bluelagoon]

Is that like pumping dirty water from one tank to the next?Hopefully this is not the idea.There's really no way to avoid water WC's for discus.There's other stuff like DOC/TDS,bacteria loads ect..

[Willie]

If you just go to a bare bottom tank, then an 80% water change is exactly the same amount of work as a 100% water change. Put in a large piece of driftwood and grow some Porthos is tank decor is important. Otherwise, you seem to be going to a lot of trouble to make minor improvements to water quality. If your objective is better quality water, there are simpler solutions.

Willie

[Jenene]

If I am understanding correctly this is what is being referred to- making two smaller tanks into a larger on by volume. Would think it would be a tricky undertaking with the size of Discus and the cleaning it would require. Water Bridge.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tmsHa5spqc

[Ryan925]

I think you need to question is why your nitrates are climbing so rapidly

[Jenene]

I think you need to question is why your nitrates are climbing so rapidly

Good point Ryan. Back to basics first and foremost.

[atlantadiscus]

instead of co mingling tanks together,why not use a sump filter system on your one tank? You can make it as large as you want to add volume to the system-and not waste one/two of your tanks.

[Phillydubs]

Not to thread hack but Kyla can you tell me more about those plants? Or maybe start a new thread w your experience with them and level of care and or issues with them or benefits. Beside what you already mentioned. I'm very interested in trying that.

[Candydiscus]

Uhg you guys didnt read my whole post did you ?

I found out why my nitrates were going up so high it was because my old substrate "i didnt vacuum due to my plant" once i vacuumed it, and then just removed it completetly and put in fresh black sand the nitrates slowed down, and then when i cleaned the entire canister out which are nitrate factories they slowed down even more.

I have 7 discus in my tank, 55-60 neon tetra's, 2 adult siamese algae eaters, 1 rainbow shark, 3 cory cats, 2 otto, and 2 gold barbs in my 92g corner tank. So my bio to begin with is kinda high plus i feed my discus 2 maybe times a day using 2 cubes each beef heart and blood worms, then a pinch of flakes for my neons and other fish. And no i dont have food sitting on the bottom. With black sand you can see any and every little spec of dirt/poo ect..

Plus remember I JUST put in the sand.. so there is nothing fermenting in the substrate lol, and with the black sand whatever poo or whatever is left i vacuum every day for a min or two just to clean it up. I just fed them my 4 cubes of food i mentioned above it was all over the substrate.. then after like 10 minutes its completetly gone now. I have 2 large amazon swords, a giant peice of driftwood with java fern and some telenthara renekie a red tall plant in the back.. I dont have millions of fast growing plants.. Plants dont do **** to nitrates unless you have ALOT of fast growing plants, CO2 and high lighting. Trust me ive been doing this for 20 years.. nitrates is the last thing plants actually try to suck up. Look it up its a scientific fact.

Anyway, my nitrates obviously still rise despite what i did, i still have to do 80% water changes every 2-3 days.. at least its better then every day. Also remember my tap has 2-5 PPM nitrate in it. So if im at 15ppm nitrates and i do a 80% water change im putting 5ppm back in.

Reason i wanted to do a water bridge was to use the 27g hex as a sort of sump.. For more water volume and put nothing but nitrate soaking plants in it like the million tiger lotus i have in other tanks and water sprite. and maybe those porthos plants someone mentioned. An extra 27g of water would dillute nitrates by 30%.. So if i have 10ppm in the tank after say day 2 with my 92g.. Then with 30% less Id have only 7ppm. If i was at 20ppm in my 92g with 27g more and 30% nitrate dillution i would have only 14ppm instead. This 30% more water would allow me maybe 1-2 more days before i have to do a water change. The whole idea of this is stop doing 80 gallons of water every 2 days and give me a damn break from so much maintence if i can push it to 3 or 4 days instead.


Also i know this forum most of you are big on bare bottom tanks.. But no offense to your tanks at all but any BB tank is ugly as sin.. A glass shell with no bottom is hideous. Thats why i put black sand in, now i can vacuum everyday because i can see whats on the substrate now.


Basically a water bridge is to allow fish to swim from one tank to another.. and or they can share the water volume.. So instead of having a 92g tank "volume wise" i will have a 119g tank volume wise.. or if i use my 44g pentagon itll be 136g volume wise, i could use the 44 and 27g lol for 163g total water volume.. And the 27g or 44g wouldnt make nitrates as id have no fish in em and no food and nothing but plants and high light for nitrates.. My question is do you think itd be worth the effort to try this ? Its really no diff then someone putting say a 50g sump under their 150g tank. except i wont use it as a sump for bio media because i dont need bio media with my canister running.

Another way to think of this is, instead of buying a 150-200g tank which i dont have the money for ATM i could merge multiple tanks into one using 10$ in pvc pipes, sure yes i know the swimming room on a 92g corner vs a 150-200g tank is smaller but we all should know water volume plays a big part in water chemistry


Here are the home made reactors i made.. Basically my 2217 eheim canister flows into the first 1L bottle with matrix,denitrate in it. Then it has two exits.. one to the tank and one to a bigger 2L bottl with matrix and denitrate in it. The flow coming out of the 2nd container is only 28GPH which i measured using a 2g container and timed it and did the math. The flow coming out of the 1st bottle back into the tank is about 57gph. The denitrate says you need 50gph or less for denitrate to grow anaerobic bacteria because of the O2 in the water, but since the flow going to these reactor is from the exit of my canister.. there shouldnt be much O2 left and whatever is left should be used up by the matrix and the slow flow on both bottles. So essentually i have created two mini canisters after my main canister that have slow flow due to them being split up. Make sense ? Itll take a month or so for tthe anaerobix bacteria to grow if it does so i should know if this will work or not by then. I've seen other people do this and it worked.

The other two pics of the tanks im talking about merging. Obviously ill clean up the 27g so it wont create nitrates and ill remove all the fish in it to other tanks. sorry for the messy desk lol

denitrate_zpsmi09zl3g.jpg

[Kyla]

i read ur original post, i just think its more work than its worth. plants r nice, but they dont replace wc.

when i wc 90gal out of my 180gal i fantasize about having a just 90 gal tank so it would be a 100% wc, instead of a 50% wc. i swear my fish grew better in the smaller tank with the same % wc. your bridges would have to extend deep into the tank to prevent them from draining during wc.

when i felt my hobby was too much $/time i dismantled tanks so i could focus more on the discus tank. i just emptied my 210gal and put it on kijiji the other day. i could have water-bridged the 180g to the 210g but i kinda feel i'm saving more effort by just minimizing tanks and making wc more efficient/easier. I also rehomed fish (tetras and plecos) to reduce the load on the tank itself, instead of increasing the tank size.

[Second Hand Pat]

I think you should clarify your goals; reduce nitrates and increase water volume? The pothos would be a super easy way to reduce nitrates and the water bridge sounds overly complex IMO.
Pat