Water change, water conservation. Question for monster tank owners.

[duanes]

While a microbiologist at the Milwaukee water purification plant, I did microbiological tests on my tank water.
It was filled with Pseudomonus, generic coliforms, and micobacterium (to name just a few), while not always pathogenic, these are "not" anything you'd want to drink, unless your purification system was in a high degree of sophistication, a very expensive project, to put it mildly.

 

[toffee]

On the other hand, the aquaponic folks, both commercial and amateur do not change water in their system. They just top up.

I view aquaponic as having an over sized plant filter, although it may not be practical for aqua-hobbyists, there may still be path to minimizing water changes. They normally do 1 part fish tank volume to 2 part grow bed volume. ie a 100g tank will have 200g of grow bed. Assuming the grow bed is 12" deep, that means for a 100g tank, there should be roughly 14 ft2 of grow bed. That being said, those guys raise food fish in much high fish density than our show tanks. And they care is fast grow and not necessarily long and happy life for their fishes.

In my hobby aquaponic system, I grow herb and stuff from gold fishes. I just top up .... but then those are just former feeder gold fishes. I mostly follow the Aussy practice:

 

[doviiman]

I don't know how deep the water table is where you are, but we had to drill over 500' for our well. It cost just under $40k altogether...

That said, I do love all the clean, chlorine-free water!

Wow, 40K to complete your well water system Not what I had in mind, I was thinking more like 6K. Plus a friend of mine did it on the other side of town, and it didn't seem to be that costly. Maybe my water pan is not as deep as in your area...

 

[knobhill]

I don't. I think the small amount of water added to the tank over a long period of time doesn't hurt the fish. If i was doing a 50% water change i would be concerned. Just 1 gallon per hour isn't a problem.

Sent from my DROIDX using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

Lucky guy! Phoenix still uses chlorine instead of chloramine in its water supply

 

[projectile]

a few ideas i can share , not tried them though

A new filter media is available recently (mainly for marine which does de-nitrification (needs 7 months to get established though)

Aquaponics with gravel is a good option too , change water only when the nitrate go high.

or you can make a solar distillation system and reuse back in your aquarium.

 

[Adamrhh]

Doesn't really waste water if you use the water to water your lawn.

 

[Egon]

Doesn't really waste water if you use the water to water your lawn.

+1
If your going to water the lawn anyway might as well put the clean water in the fish tank and give the lawn the fishy water...

 

[David R]

My suggestion if you're worried about how much water you're changing/wasting is to actually measure and log the parameters of your tank (Nitrate/Nitrite/Ammonia/TDS) and figure out how much water you need to change to keep them in check. IMO a lot of these hige 40%+ WC's are probably not necessary (I know I'm guilty of it, but have a good supply of free clean rain water) to keep the water good.

 

[toffee]

+1
If your going to water the lawn anyway might as well put the clean water in the fish tank and give the lawn the fishy water...

Not if you are a fanatic 300g tank discus owner that change water daily. not sure you lawn can take that much water.

 

[arodini]

Can the water be recycled for fish again? What kind of [heavy] cleaning/filtration is required to make it usable again and again? water engineer anyone?

My parents, who live only 5 miles away, have a huge garden which they water twice a day. They try to re-use every drop of water they can, while I'm over here just drain it out to the lawn, although only 140g/week.