.25 GPH drip emitter

[nfored]

Why can't you use straight R/O water? R/O usually includes charcoal and micron filtration.

If I use straight r/o water then a bunch of bad things will happen.

1 The water hardness will drop over time.
2 The drop in water hardness will remove almost all of the buffering in the water
3. With no buffering the pH level becomes volatile.

Yes my R/O has to carbon filters. The new set would go into the tap water. I am interested in maybe dripping some type of diluted buffering agent into the water, thus avoiding a drip of tap water.

Please correct me if I am wrong about the straight r/o water. Also thinks for the timer Idea, I like that better any way, this way it con only run when Im home; much easier to see a problem.

 

[CHOMPERS]

You don't need it to be a constant flow.

For example, you could use a larger GPH (e.g. 1 gph) emitter and have it on for 4 hours (...or .5 gph for 8 hours) to achieve the same effect (4 GPD).

I've used a simple, battery operated lawn sprinkler timer (available at any Lowes or HD) to set the stop / start times for water.

Good idea. My brain went back to my Electrical Engineering class. I was thinking of using drip emitters in series and parallel like resistors to achieve the 4 gpd.

 

[dogofwar]

Also, I wouldn't worry about changing too much water each day.

In my DIY water changing system (for 40-ish tanks), I actually removed the emitters and directly connected the feeder lines from the water source with simple connectors (that don't limit the flow). Since it's a loop, pressure (and flow to each tank) is relatively even...and I can change more water in a shorter amount of time.