Drip system, how much do you drip per day ?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Man i hate to see your water bills, my water bill is 130 bucks ever 2 months, and I only change 30% a week on my 55, 10 % on my 30, and on my 20's.

I have been broke, so i haven't gotten to setup my water recycling, but i want to recycle all used tank water for other uses.
 
Forgot to add this.

Way more low tech and not as cool as the dosing pump but is an idea for someone to think about.

A large water storage tank say 300G, a pump and a timer. Fill the tank, dose it with prime, then have the pump come on for however long to fill the tanks. Then once a week or however often refill the storage thank and re dose it with prime, this way there is no question on are the chemicals removed.

maybe be stupid I don't know.
 
flamenco-t;2164331; said:
My dillema was simple...

After doing some research on carbon filtration, I found that in order to remove the ammonia (after the chemical breakdown of chloramine) it takes more than carbon to completely neutralise it. I found that prime (sodium thysulfate) will detoxified ammonia as the results of chemical breakdown of chloramine.

Trust me, if it were up to me, I wouldn't spend $ 300 on a dosmatic injectors setup.

I have looked into a high purity carbon, but even then it gets exhausted rather quickly with chloramines.

Stan
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Stan,
There is nothing wrong with getting different opinions and I simply disagree with your thinking. Ammonia ... will be removed rapidly by your biofilter. Chlorine & Chloramine will also be harmless at the concentrations we are discussing even WITHOUT a carbon filter. However the cost of a carbon filter is so low that you might as well have one. I use a cartridge filter which allows you to re-pack your own carbon (or anything you wish) so I can utilise a higher grade carbon but even a lower grade carbon allows me months of use with tonnes (literally) of water weekly. I do speak from experience.

If you are using a municipal water source then you will inevitably get spikes of bad water. Be it peaks of Ammonia, Nitrite, anti-algicides, pipe cleaning chemicals, roadworks in the local neighbourhood etc. Ask for a history of readings at your local water board if you wish. Doing a timer controlled waterchange during this period and you will see the tragic results (this has happened to me). Of course dripping 24/7 guarrantees you get this bad water too but at much slower rates and reduced amounts until the good water comes through again.

So to summarise ... No timer. No Normally Closed solenoid (open on power). No float switch. No mixing tanks. No aging water tank. Just drip water in and let it overflow down the drain.

I will stop posting since I am not really adding anything new to the discussion anymore. There are lots of different ways to do things of course.
I hope you work out your dilemma.
 
I have used a drip system for about 6 years. The first 2 years it was on my 200 gallon tank. I dripped about 12 gallon per day and I didn't filter the water at all. I had a overflow in the sump. My current 400 gallon tank I drip about 20-30 gallons a day and I used a high quality drinking water filter that good for 20,000 gallons. My tank is drilled and the water runs outside to my pond. No parts to fail I only worry about clogs in the drain line. The more sophisticated you drip system is the more likely it can fail and flood you tank/house. I have thought about dosing with prime but I have never had a water quality problem in 6 years. Why spend more money and have more devices to maintain. I added a drip system to make my fish keeping simpler. Don't over think it. K.I.S.S.
 
johnptc;2165096; said:
flamenco-t you should run full pressure to the dosmatic....put a valve on the output side to control the flow NOT the input side........per the factory
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John

When I talked to the tech at dosmatic, they suggested that i run 30 psi to the injector. My tap water comes out at 55 psi.

The problem is flow or lack of flow to the injectors causing the shaft o-ring to wear out.

I am running an irrigation dripper to reduce the flow to 2 GPH, this is what restrict the flow from 45 gph to 2 gph at 30 psi.

stan
 
Fishdance,

I am running on municipal water. I am aware of ammonia will be consumed by the filter bio bacteria, but I'd rather not find out. My fish produces enough ammonia as is..

Chlorine and chloramine is something that I'd rather not mess with. I am sure a low concentration is harmless at times, but again, sometime we do have spikes. Unless we're getting our water direct from the stream of water from the mountain, we're all at risk of contaminants imo.

I am running a sump/wet dry, I can't drain it out of the sump, I have to use a float switch to pump water out of the sump.

On my other tank 75 gallon, I am setting up a simple drip and overflow out since I am not running a sump on that tank. Just drill the tank on the upper side and any overflow of water will flow out of the tank to outside.

I do appreciate your comments and greatly enjoy the discussion. There's no right or wrong way of doing things, just whatever works on each individual basis.

Keep it coming...

stan
 
flamenco-t;2165177; said:
I am running a sump/wet dry, I can't drain it out of the sump, I have to use a float switch to pump water out of the sump.
stan
Click to expand...

You do not need to drain from the sump. You could add an extra overflow on your main tank or keep a smaller additional tank with overflow elsewhere. Just as you do not need to have your bio-tower anywhere near your sump, you can also place a drain anywhere you like....



The most obvious and easiest way to test theories out IMO is to set up a small test tank. A ten litre tank/bucket with some delicate tetras getting 10% weekly change equates to roughly 150 ml a day or 6ml per hour. Someone try this without any carbon filter and report back. Additionally it would be very easy to set up this "canary tank" before the water hits your main tank!!
 
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