Thought I'd do a little update on the water war waged here everyday.....
A little history to help explain why we run what we do....
I've been trying to keep monsters for a long time. Usually resulted in less then good results. I listened to advice for many years about water. Mainly the thought of whatever comes out of your tap is "good enough" for anything you want to keep. I ran with this theory for years and years while in rental houses. Started like everyone else and spent the weekend doing manual water changes. Used a long hose to siphon into shower and removed showerhead - installed drain hose to refill. Tap water conditioner and that was it. Well, naturally through the evolution of the MFKer the tanks started multiplying and growing larger. Soon with the addition of rays I built a pond in my basement and started building my own filtration - very large wet/dries. It worked but maintenance took forever.
After about a half decade in the "cottage" and meeting the now mother of my children and her making it through the fish talk we moved to a larger rental. Big enough to finally set up the 750 gallon tank I had been storing for over 2 years. Along with the new tank going up filtration changed. I built radial flow separators and began using a "drip system". The RFSs worked unbelievably well despite no fine tuning. The drip made its way to all of my tanks. More tanks went up, maintenance began taking less time (larger siphons and pumps involved) but still took forever. I noticed rays and fish going off food when I'd move them from system to system. We're doing water like everyone else so MUST be filtration. I began rebuilding filtration over and over again, never getting the results I was hoping for. When testing the water which I seldom did the PH was always off the charts. Who cares right? I thought a drip was the end all answer - as that's what everyone else insisted on. I sought out someone I trusted more then the masses and tossed everything I thought out the window. Back to square one - the water.... I decided to start dabbling with the idea that what came out of my tap was not ideal and in fact could be cause for concern despite advice given to not mess with it. I quickly learned I bit off more then I could chew. We didn't have the room or the income to tackle water intervention. After many years in this place it was finally time to start looking at a house to purchase.
We purchased the house we live in about 3 years ago. We began moving for us it was heaven, to the fish it was hell. We thought the best way to move was to pay for both places for a few months and build a huge pond in the new house to hold all the fish while systems went up one by one. The losses started... Just one here and there, but the more we got moved, the more the systems started running the more we started loosing. I believe we lost a total of 16 rays. Countless irreplaceable fish - Huge Tatfs, Wolves, a Lince and sooo many rays. The situation was overwhelming. Can only bury so many before you're ready to quit. I was wayyyy past ready BUT I couldn't shake a hunch..... Had to be something with the water but tests seemed to be similar to the other house.... I thought IF I'm gonna quit this hobby I'm going to second guess that hunch the rest of my life. So.... there was only one thing left to do - ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long.... Hahaha (hope some of you get it) That one thing was water intervention. Cut the tap water with pure RO.
We ordered a unit that was supposed to do 1K/day. It was far from that but regardless, we had low/no TDS water and scrambled to get storage going. The losses slowed, eventually stopped. What I took away from this is what worked for most people did not work for us. What we were doing and what we would move forward with was what worked and is working for us. Is it a huge pain in the ass? Sure. But isn't this hobby just one giant pain in the ass that we love? Sure is. We had to get more storage. We had to re plum a lot of stuff. Had to change to different pre-filters. Water softener in the house we bought was old and too small and resulted in destroying the RO, so new softener installed and RO over hauled. Think (knock on wood) we've been running unchanged for over a year now and everything seems to be working well. Hopefully you made it this far..... Sorry for the long explanation hopefully it makes sense. Now for the pics......
Water storage is a 100 and a 200 gallon vertical tanks for RO and a 150 for tap. Heaters and air in all 3. These are plumed to both systems with a Hammerhead moving the water. All systems here run sand filters so the backflush is the pump driven water change. Water goes straight down the sewer main via 3" line that leaves the house in the winter. When warm out all the water change water gets dumped in the sump pump well where the pump carries it out to a 300 gallon rubbermaid where it is used for yard irrigation and likely will also be used for a garden this coming year.
First "system" is a 8x3x2 over a 4x4x2. Pair of Darts on a 4x2x2 sump, 60 gallon reactor feeds a bacteria house wet/dry in sump. Ap 100 handles air. A Gold Dart fed sand filter assists on mechanical and offers the luxury of swift water changes.
Pallet rack system is a pair of 4x3s and a pair of 6x3 tanks, a 80 gallon reactor gravity feeds a wet dry REACTOR (wet dry above water line, moving bed reactor below the waterline) that resides in the 240 gallon sump. Another pair of Darts return and another Gold Dart fed sand filter in play. Alita 60 and a Jehmco 60 handle air on this one.
Given the amount of water in the basements I chose to install an air exchanger in the lower basement bathroom where I had access to a pair of windows that now have 6" PVC running through them for intake and exhaust on the exchanger.
IF there's interest I bet I can cough up some pics of the fish that live down there.....
A little history to help explain why we run what we do....
I've been trying to keep monsters for a long time. Usually resulted in less then good results. I listened to advice for many years about water. Mainly the thought of whatever comes out of your tap is "good enough" for anything you want to keep. I ran with this theory for years and years while in rental houses. Started like everyone else and spent the weekend doing manual water changes. Used a long hose to siphon into shower and removed showerhead - installed drain hose to refill. Tap water conditioner and that was it. Well, naturally through the evolution of the MFKer the tanks started multiplying and growing larger. Soon with the addition of rays I built a pond in my basement and started building my own filtration - very large wet/dries. It worked but maintenance took forever.
After about a half decade in the "cottage" and meeting the now mother of my children and her making it through the fish talk we moved to a larger rental. Big enough to finally set up the 750 gallon tank I had been storing for over 2 years. Along with the new tank going up filtration changed. I built radial flow separators and began using a "drip system". The RFSs worked unbelievably well despite no fine tuning. The drip made its way to all of my tanks. More tanks went up, maintenance began taking less time (larger siphons and pumps involved) but still took forever. I noticed rays and fish going off food when I'd move them from system to system. We're doing water like everyone else so MUST be filtration. I began rebuilding filtration over and over again, never getting the results I was hoping for. When testing the water which I seldom did the PH was always off the charts. Who cares right? I thought a drip was the end all answer - as that's what everyone else insisted on. I sought out someone I trusted more then the masses and tossed everything I thought out the window. Back to square one - the water.... I decided to start dabbling with the idea that what came out of my tap was not ideal and in fact could be cause for concern despite advice given to not mess with it. I quickly learned I bit off more then I could chew. We didn't have the room or the income to tackle water intervention. After many years in this place it was finally time to start looking at a house to purchase.
We purchased the house we live in about 3 years ago. We began moving for us it was heaven, to the fish it was hell. We thought the best way to move was to pay for both places for a few months and build a huge pond in the new house to hold all the fish while systems went up one by one. The losses started... Just one here and there, but the more we got moved, the more the systems started running the more we started loosing. I believe we lost a total of 16 rays. Countless irreplaceable fish - Huge Tatfs, Wolves, a Lince and sooo many rays. The situation was overwhelming. Can only bury so many before you're ready to quit. I was wayyyy past ready BUT I couldn't shake a hunch..... Had to be something with the water but tests seemed to be similar to the other house.... I thought IF I'm gonna quit this hobby I'm going to second guess that hunch the rest of my life. So.... there was only one thing left to do - ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long.... Hahaha (hope some of you get it) That one thing was water intervention. Cut the tap water with pure RO.
We ordered a unit that was supposed to do 1K/day. It was far from that but regardless, we had low/no TDS water and scrambled to get storage going. The losses slowed, eventually stopped. What I took away from this is what worked for most people did not work for us. What we were doing and what we would move forward with was what worked and is working for us. Is it a huge pain in the ass? Sure. But isn't this hobby just one giant pain in the ass that we love? Sure is. We had to get more storage. We had to re plum a lot of stuff. Had to change to different pre-filters. Water softener in the house we bought was old and too small and resulted in destroying the RO, so new softener installed and RO over hauled. Think (knock on wood) we've been running unchanged for over a year now and everything seems to be working well. Hopefully you made it this far..... Sorry for the long explanation hopefully it makes sense. Now for the pics......
Water storage is a 100 and a 200 gallon vertical tanks for RO and a 150 for tap. Heaters and air in all 3. These are plumed to both systems with a Hammerhead moving the water. All systems here run sand filters so the backflush is the pump driven water change. Water goes straight down the sewer main via 3" line that leaves the house in the winter. When warm out all the water change water gets dumped in the sump pump well where the pump carries it out to a 300 gallon rubbermaid where it is used for yard irrigation and likely will also be used for a garden this coming year.
First "system" is a 8x3x2 over a 4x4x2. Pair of Darts on a 4x2x2 sump, 60 gallon reactor feeds a bacteria house wet/dry in sump. Ap 100 handles air. A Gold Dart fed sand filter assists on mechanical and offers the luxury of swift water changes.
Pallet rack system is a pair of 4x3s and a pair of 6x3 tanks, a 80 gallon reactor gravity feeds a wet dry REACTOR (wet dry above water line, moving bed reactor below the waterline) that resides in the 240 gallon sump. Another pair of Darts return and another Gold Dart fed sand filter in play. Alita 60 and a Jehmco 60 handle air on this one.
Given the amount of water in the basements I chose to install an air exchanger in the lower basement bathroom where I had access to a pair of windows that now have 6" PVC running through them for intake and exhaust on the exchanger.
IF there's interest I bet I can cough up some pics of the fish that live down there.....
