Drip system maintenance costs and chloramine filter?

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breakspirit

Candiru
MFK Member
Jan 23, 2009
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I'm playing with the idea of setting up a drip system for my 125 gallon SA cichlid tank. My water is very hard with a lot of sediment and I'm pretty sure the water company is adding chloramine. I'd probably be dripping about 40 gallons a week.
I'm willing to add a full RO system but I'm wondering if that might be overkill. What I'm thinking is that I might just need the dual stage chloramine filter from the filter guys (http://www.thefilterguys.biz/chloramine_filters.htm).

So, my question is two-fold. Will that chloramine filter do the trick or is there reason to go for a full RO unit? I've got massive biofiltration via a wet/dry on the tank and the added ammonia from the chloramine filter should not create any issues.

Also, can you guys give me a ball-park figure for what the maintenance costs would be for such a system (the media for either the chloramine filter or a full RO filter if needed)? I've seen wildly varying numbers online. Given my water's poor quality as stated above and the fact I want to drip 40 gallons per week, what do you think?

Thanks!
 
The filter guys website has a three stage filter with a sediment filter and 2 carbon filter chambers. I'm thinking that's the one I probably should go with unless someone tells me otherwise.
 
You need to find out for sure if there actually are chloramines in your tap water. Most local water reports can be found online. If not, you can email them and ask if they use chloramines or not, and ask if they'll send you a copy of the water report or chemical analysis. You can test the tap water yourself also. Just get a chlorine/chloramine test kit.

Either way, you might want use 1 or 2 stages of sediment filters, so that the carbon block filter will last longer. There are washable/reusable pleated sediment filters, that work really well. Make sure you get clear canister housing so you monitor how frequently they need to be cleaned. The pleated cartridges just need to be rinsed thouroughly and soaked in bleach water for a few hours, then rinsed and dechlored to get the bleach out. Maybe start off with a single 1 micron sediment filter and if that gets clogged too easily, then add another sediment filter in front of that, about 5 to 10 microns.

The beauty of starting a tap water filtration system is you can customize it and always add more canisters later.

For my drip system, I just use 2 stages of filtration, but I don't have chlorimines. I have a 1 micron sediment pre-filter (Hydronix SPC-25-1001) and a 0.6 micron KX Matrikx CTO Plus (01-250-125-975) carbon block filter. The prefilter needs to be cleaned about once every 3 months. The carbon block filter needs to be replaced about once a year. If I didn't use the sediment pre-filter, I'd need to replace the carbon block filter about every 3 months.

I get most of my stuff at filtersfast.com
The canister housing I use is Pentek 158008 3/8" NPT Slim Line 10" Clear Housing
 
a filter housing filled with zeolite after the chloramine GAC filter will strip the ammonia out of the water.

Perfect hardwater chloramine filter would be several stages.

Stg 1: 5 micron sediment filter
Stg 2: 1 micron sediment filter
Stg 3: 5 micron carbon block
Stg 4: 0.6 micron carbon block
Stg 5: GAC chloramine carbon filter
Stg 6: Zeolite filled filter housing

Depending if your water has a lot of iron and/or magnesium you could do KDF/carbon or Birm/carbon filter between Stg 2 and 3. KDF and Birm are redox media that precipitate out iron and magnesium and would help with you hard water stains.
 
I set this drip system up yesterday. It was a pretty big hassle but I'm glad I did it and it is working great so far. I did end up buying the three stage system from The Filter Guys. All together with plumbing supplies, I probably spent around 250 or 300 bucks. Totally worth it.
I'll be making a series of YouTube videos about it in the near future. My channel is youtube.com/breakspirit if you're interested.
 
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