At my wit's end with water quality... any suggestions?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
How clean is your roof, is collection rain water an option there??

As above, the "waste " from the RO need not be wasted, and with a bit of clever plumbing could be used for flushing the toilet, washing cars, watering plants etc etc. How many tanks do you have and how much water (%) are you changing to go thru 750g a week?!
 
Two 150s, a 210, three 55s, a 65 gallon cube, a 40 breeder, and two 20 longs, all getting at least 75% a week. I drain them until the fish are lying on their sides. The 40 is actually getting 90%+ daily because I'm raising fry in it. I drain it down until there's about 1/2" of water in the bottom. The actual volume of a 40 breeder, filled to the top, is about 47 gallons, so I'm probably using ~300 gallons a week just with that tank alone.

I know that may sound excessive to some but I do keep a lot of large, messy fish, and for three years it worked beautifully with tons of spawning and beautiful grow-outs. To literally flush all that down the toilet (or, more precisely, toss it into my rose bushes) in a matter of months is frustrating and heartbreaking. I finished getting rid of all my large fish that hadn't died yet this weekend. All I have left are my Dicrossus, Heroina, Geophagus parnaibae, and Crenicara punctulatum (because I can more easily maintain them in the smaller tanks) until I can figure something out.
 
In many parts of the area near me, population has been increasing exponentially, and because of this increase, the water table has been drawn down at the same rate and water quality in those areas has deteriorated, radon and other undesirable minerals are appearing and become a serious problem.
There is not much a water company can do with a ground water source like this.
Those areas effected are needing to blend water with my city water (a surface water source) to improve water quality, and has become a political and economic nightmare.
This may be your case.
If so, collecting rain water, and blending with tap may be a difficult, but necessary option.
Because my tap water is basically the same as Lake Tanganyika in chemical properties, I need to collect, blend and store rain water for my South American and other softer water species.
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And this is difficult to do here in winter .
 
I know that may sound excessive to some but I do keep a lot of large, messy fish, and for three years it worked beautifully with tons of spawning and beautiful grow-outs.
Click to expand...

Yep it does sound excessive to me, even with the big fish. I've kept plenty of well stocked tanks and never needed to do such big changes, the fry tanks may be a different story tho. Have you tried reducing the amount of water you change to see if it has a noticeable effect on the fish or parameters? I'd seriously look into collecting rain water if possible, especially given the fish you mostly seem into like softer water. Otherwise downscaling the tanks and/or water change regime so an RO system is feasible may be the only option.


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Ryan, you will probably HATE this, but rather than all empty tanks:
your stinking water may work better for some tougher non-SA species :-(
maybe you could experiment with one tank. or is that a worse thought to you than going ac/dc?
:-I

Lol
 
got a backyard? get yourself an intex pool and set it up.

Then call these guys:
http://www.darlingsdaughters.com/ and have them fill it with clean water (they do drinking water so I assume they can supply fish safe water)

That'll tide you over while the local water supply is being investigated.
 
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