DRIP SYSTEMS Success & Failures

JK47

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Aug 4, 2008
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Not enough good topics in here latelly.. I think we need a compilation thread of successes and failures from those of us who have set up drip systems. It would be valuable for members to hear our experiences from those of us working with these systems, both the good and the bad.. Lets help other members get their Sundays back! Post your system, specs and pics.

Anyone who has set one up says the same thing, "why did it take me so long to do this and why isn't everyone...?"

I'll start, sorry for the multiple posts, I mixed up the order of the pics so I have to do it in chunks.
 

JK47

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In total I spent less than $150 and put in about 2 hours worth of work. (I could do it again in about 45 mins now though) The first thing I did was look up my municipality water treatment report online to see if I had chlorine or chloramine. Luckily I only have chlorine so I contacted these guys and got my chlorine filter.

Pharaoh and jcardona1 (among others) recommended them and I'm glad, they are awesome. Jim: thefilterguys@charter.net is the man and very knowledgeable. Their website can be somewhat hard to navigate but this is where the units are found: http://thefilterguys.biz/ro_systems.htm

This is the filter right out of the box.

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These are most of the pieces I picked up from Home Depot to set everything up. The quick disconnects are a smart way to go IMO for making things flexible down the road. The black line is 1/4" ID and the clear tubing it 5/8" ID. These sizes are easy to find quick disconnects for.

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First up is getting the water supply to the filter. I am supplying the water to the filter from my washing machine hookup out into my garage. I bought this brass fitting to split that line, one for the washer, one for the filter.

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The irrigation line drippers. I bought the 1 GPH and 2 GPH versions.

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The threaded quick disconnects are the way to go. I strongly recommend you use them where ever possible instead of hardline plumbing.

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These two pieces are the pieces that connect the filter to the washer faucet. One piece is the kind that thread onto a standard hose faucet , the other threads into it and is where the 1/4" ID line plugs into.

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A little plumbers tape and your ready to roll..

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All hooked up to the faucet adapter. The black line is run through a hole in the wall out to the filter in the garage. The clear line coming back through that same hole is the return from the tank (overflow line) that drains into the washing machines drain.

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I made a nifty ghetto shelf to mount the filter to and hold extra cartridges above.

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JK47

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I mounted the lines along the floor base of my garage.

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The Black line below is the line running from the chlorine filter into the tank. It is attached to a 1 GPH drip emitter (the button drippers above) to control flow rate. I get a 56% water change per week on my 300 gallon with this flow rate. I only have a Parachromis dovii pair in the tank so I do not need to waste water on 100% WC's or anything (in this tank at least)

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Since I cannot run the overflow from a sump (the safest way), I have to run this overflow over the top/back of the tank. For those of us who cannot use a sump for whatever reason, this is where you need to read closely. In order to do that I have to drill a 1 1/4" hole in the top of the acrylic.

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I am moving next month to a new place and will be able to convert the overflow to one in the sump with an emergency drain. This one has to be gravity fed HOB style overflow for now.

(continued)

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JK47

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This quick disconnect is where the 5/8" ID line plugs into the overflow itself.

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This is the basic design of the overflow. Really simple and just a couple of PVC pieces.

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All glued together. I am using the 5/8" ID line as the overflow/gravity tube here. BIG MISTAKE..... This caused the tank to overflow but we will get to that later.

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I didn't want the line itself to plug up if it was pushed too far down into the overflow tubes so I drilled holes through it to ensure I had constant flow coming in from all sides.

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This is where the quick disconnects are nice, they allow you to unhook the overflow for whatever reason. Like re-priming it because you overflowed your tank....... :irked:

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I drilled the tank before I glued the overflow to make sure I could test fit the PVC overflow before it was final.

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(continued)

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JK47

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Next up you have to drill the inlet on the overflow itself where the water from the tank will enter the overflow at the desired water level. If you leave it open on the bottom, you will lose the gravity hoses prime if you do a water change for whatever reason. I glued everything together so the placement was final, dipped it in the water and pulled it back out.

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After pulling it out I used a sharpie to mark where it was wet (where I wanted the water level to be).

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Then I drilled the holes to inlet water at the desired water level. I drilled two holes on the opposite sides slightly higher as emergency holes in case of blockage on the main holes. My dovii have tons of fry all the time so I wanted to plan for silly crap happening.

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To prime the overflow, you just dip it in the tank, flip it over a few times until the air is purged from the gravity fed overflow tube. BAM done..

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Your going to drip a little water here but after the overflow is primed and positioned, I hooked up the 5/8" ID line to the overflow quick disconnect. MAKE SURE you already have the drain line ran to where ever you want it to drain to or else your going to make a mess with the line draining at the time.

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(FAST FORWARD A WEEK) This is why I mentioned above I overflowed the tank.... :duh:

I lost the syphon in the overflow tube because dissolved oxygen was building up in the line. Rookie move not checking it but like I said post the stuff we did wrong too right?? The first pic is 24 hours after priming the overflow, the second pic is 48 hours. You can see how fast the dissolved O2 was building up.

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After I did this I was told to switch the overflow tube to a smaller diameter tube (the smaller diameter, the faster the flow rate through the tube and less surface area within the tube to allow O2 to build up). So I switched it to a 1/4" ID line. It kept up with the 1 GPH flow just fine but what I didn't realize was the air would build up even faster with the smaller diameter tube because that was not the problem in my case. The first night we stayed at a friends house I came home and it was flooded again... I was re-priming the overflow every other day at this point.

How did I fix this? I had 3-4 sponge filters stashed in this tank running on air power so I could move them to cycle fry tanks quickly. The amount of dissolved oxygen I was adding to the tank was excessive. When I moved the air pumps off the tanks and powered the sponges with powerheads instead, I never saw another bubble again. This has been running since xmas BTW. So for those of you who need to run an HOB overflow for whatever reason, keep in mind the dissolved O2 content in your tank and watch carefully.


(continued)

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JK47

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Aug 4, 2008
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OK so the air problem solved and the overflow tube reduced in size the 300 gallon is finished. Next up is the 125 gallon overflow. All the tanks in the garage will be running off the same system (300g, 180g and 120g).

I used a slightly different design with this one because I wanted the overflow to fit snuggly against the tank, same as the 300g but it has a slut in the back just like most glass tanks.

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I split the line from the filter going to the 300g with a quick disconnect tee and a ball valve to reduce the flow and ran it straight to the tank with a 1 GPH drip.

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The flow through the drip is the same going to the 125g as the 300 gallon but I use the ball vavle to reduce the flow rate back approximately 50% making the total water change per week on the 125g 67%. Again I am not a fan of wasting water for no reason.

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All glued together. I like this design it is a lot more sleak than other design's I have seen online. It will also not lose it's prime if a water change is needed. The prime is never lost because the water level in the overflow never drops below where the quick disconnect is.

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Next up is to make a hole in the top of the overflow on the outside of the tank. The hole needs to be larger than the outside diameter of the overflow tube. Air needs to be able to get in here so it cannot be a snug fit. The overflow tube it 1/4" ID and 3/8" OD so I used a 1/2" drill bit.

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Pilot hole drilled and 1/16" or so (going off memory here, it doesn't really matter).

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Same as the other overflow you need to drill holes to allow the water to flow into the overflow from within the tank.

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The outlet from the overflow to the drain in the wash room is the same 5/8" ID line as on the other tank.

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That's it for my system. When I move next month there will be a change in all my tanks to sumps so I won't have to worry about these overflows but now that there is no air being trapped I think they are 100% reliable.

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JK47

Retired MFK Admin
MFK Member
Aug 4, 2008
11,112
3,478
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Washington
Who's next??? Mine sucks so lets see some better ones..

ps - I have an awesome non electrical/chemical design for people with chloramines, coming soon when we can get aclockworkorange all set up ;) stay tuned
 

Reedmaster16

Piranha
MFK Member
Oct 13, 2005
652
235
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Ohio
Wow what a great post and timing haha. I just completed installing my drip system on my 8x3x2 plywood tank Tuesday after work. I did not take pics during the installation but I can snap some later tonight and post them up when I am home.

Brief Summary

Filtration: 3 x Fx5's w/ ceramic rings, Marineland 350 w/ TMC 25w Vecton UV Sterilizer plumbed in

Aeration: Commercial grade air pump w/ 2 9" bubble disks

Heating: 1000w TrueTemp Titanium Heater w/ Digital Controller

My system is a simple 2gph drip with an eshopps HOB overflow that drains into the house sump area. I drilled a small hole in the top of the overflow utube and siliconed an air check valve in place to help with the air buildup from the low flow rate. I also have an aqualifter pump I intend to hook up to it but have not yet done so. I want to see how long it takes for air to build up with the massive amount of O2 and surface agitation in the tank.

New water drips in at 2gph on one end of the tank near the heater and the overflow is on the opposite end where the excess water drains out.

I purchased and installed the same filters from thefilterguys to remove the chlorine.

Only been running a couple days but everything has worked flawlessly thus far (knock on wood). I siliconed a piece of lexan to the overflow box that sits in the tank to lower the water level so if the overflow does malfunction I have more time before a spill occurs.

Ill take a video or try and get some pics up later tonight.

-Reed
 

dxdx

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Jan 26, 2010
1,111
4
68
NJ, USA
I couldn't imagine doing a water change on my 300, much less some of the bigger tanks on here. When I set my tank up, an auto drip was as essential as the filtration...

My failure is that I think I chose the wrong gph drip emitter, but other than that it's a complete success. I went with .5gph on my 300 but I think I'll step up to 1gph and see how that goes.

My setup is pretty simple, I ran the water line through the same Filter Guys filter as above then it goes into the the tank. For overflow, I decided to drill a hole in my sump, put an elbow in so that I could adjust the water line. This elbow is attached to flexible tubing that goes through the wall behind the tank, through the crawlspace, and out into the backyard. Simple, gravity driven, works during a power outage.

I don't have many pics of the setup, but this is what the overflow looks like in my sump.

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hbluehunter

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Jul 20, 2007
1,976
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68
Lynnwood, Wa.
My setup is pretty simple, I ran the water line through the same Filter Guys filter as above then it goes into the the tank. For overflow, I decided to drill a hole in my sump, put an elbow in so that I could adjust the water line. This elbow is attached to flexible tubing that goes through the wall behind the tank, through the crawlspace, and out into the backyard. Simple, gravity driven, works during a power outage.

So this works ok for ya ?? This was exactly what i was going to do.. Except my tank is up against a wall that on the other side is the outside of the house.. So i was just going to run pvc through the wall from the sump and then into the yard..
Thanks Justin for the great info.. :)
 
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