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Drip system...


Flycaster

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In an attempt to reduce maintenance on the school aquarium I am thinking of trying a drip system to keep the tanks topped up over holiday periods to avoid heater/ pump burnouts and to keep fresh water going into the tanks for the fish.

My idea is relatively simple. The plan is to set up an irrigation system like for a garden with the tap connected too 13mm pipe, I bought a flow reduction kit that reduces the pressure from the mains. I will run this over the top of the tanks and have drippers dripping 2l per hour into the tanks. Overflow will go out into the drain.

My worry is that using mains water it will have chlorine (and possibly chloramine? ) in the water. Is this going to be an issue dripped in at the low rate? I'm thinking that chlorine should be released from the water by the dripping process but I am not too sure about other possible contaminants.

If I put one of those inline irrigation filters on and then filled the innards with charcoal will that alleviate much of huge issues?

Cheers

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The issue you have will not be chlorine but chloramine, as you also mention. Chloramine is chlorine+ammonia bonded together which is stable and will not break down as straight chlorine will do. So the risk is if the water board dumps a load of chloramine into the water system, as their mandate is potable water, and they have no care for our fish.

You don't need to do 21 litres per hour first off. Change 1/3 the aquarium water weekly via this drip method, and in addition the flow reduction kit you mention, also hook up one of those under the sink potable water filtration units that can filter out chloramine. I believe there are units that will do this, but will come at a price. If you find one, please PM me where and what you got would be appreciated.

Lastly, dependant on your stocking levels and fish species; so long as you have reliable auto fish feeder, it won't hurt the fish greatly with an established well set up tank to not receive a water change during school holidays. Instead of the above you might want to consider a denitrate filter permanently set up on this tank.

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Yeah thanks it is 2 litres per hour drip. Figured chloramine might have been the issue :-( I asked the water company what they put in water but have surprisingly had no reply. I'll keep investigating, thanks for your reply

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Have a look on google at auto top up systems. They are relatively cheap and can be gravity feed from storage containers meaning you can pretreat your water.

This would be a good short term fix, two week break, but the long break would probably need a water change in between.

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2ltr per hour drip? setup a drum with premixed water inside put a powerhead and connect your plumbing to it run over your tanks as you were going to but have the hose returning to the drum for any excess easy fixed

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The amount of water you can safely add will depend on the volume of your tank(s). As chloramine takes 3 days to break down, changing less than 10-15% of the total tank volume over a 3 day period will allow you to continously drip water safely. Setting a 5% daily change rate is still quite high as this means you are totally changing all your water every 20 days but might be useful for intensive growout. So for a 1000L tank, you could change 50L daily at maximum. Changing less would increase the safety margin and as mentioned, you can further increase safety margin with an inline activated carbon filter which doesn't need to be very big since the slow flow gives long dwell times. Slow drip especially useful if your water supply has erratic quality and very good to reduce temperature differences in winter.

If your tanks are not very big, you can implement the same concept by dripping into a water storage container that overflows into the tanks. The exit rate will be exactly the same as your drip rate since it is a displacement overflow. An IBC or several 200L barrels for example.

I don't use a pressure reducing kit, I just have a dedicated tap very slightly open. It's easy to put in an extra tap onto the water line yourself if you don't have a spare.

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As Fishdance has already covered, it will depend on the volume of the aquarium. I run a 12ltr / day drip on a 570ltr aquarium with tropheus..

I would presume being school aquariums, there are not many delicate species kept. With species requiring less fluctunat water parameters, you will also need consider temperature (not a big one for the small drip volumes) and buffering capacites. If the hardness and Ph of the tap water is low, unless buffers are added, the water parameters will slowly decline.

At the moment I am manually buffering but I am looking at an automated dosing machine for liquid buffers..

I couldnt see the 2 week holidays being an issue but the big christmas break could be a pain.. What do you do for feeding, Auto feeders?

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"As chloramine takes 3 days to break down"

Chloramine does not take three days to break down. If it did, nothing would ever reach a home as it takes time for the water to go from "A" to "B" with "B" being you tap. The very reason the water board changed from chlorine to chloramine is is that it does not break down as chorine will, given time.

21 litre per hour drip does sound a bit excessive doesn't it (-; I must confess I did read 21 litres and didn't think about it. My one excuse is I did it during a work lunch break and was rushed.

Bear in mind here with this thread, I think the best way to KISS it (keep it simple stupid) would be to put a dentrate filter together and the fish can tough it out during school holidays and rough it regarding water changes. As it was said above being a school tank, one would assume the fish to be the more hardier ones. Instead of putting money it an automated water change system, put it into a DIY denitrate filter and an auto feeder which could be used to feed less than the usual amount during school holiday periods.

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Chloramine breakdown is affected by many variables including UV light, temperature, alkalinity, pH and oxygen levels. From my experience in commercial aquaculture and own private fish rooms, 3 days is plenty sufficient for chloramine breakdown. You don't need total chloramine breakdown to still be fish safe, it depends on the dilution level (total water volume). I am not taking this from academic literature but real life applications. In situations where chloramine is used for disinfection and minimum levels are required, the facility will replace all old water within 3 days to maintain adequate disinfection.

I agree things should be kept simple and automated water change can be a simple constant dripping tap/hose if the tank has an overflow.

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Thanks I will have a go and see what I can cobble together. There are a variety of fish dpepending on what the students wanted to study. There are guppies and goldfish, corydoras and bristlenoses, a range of malawis ( which we actually found some fry the other day), trout ( when inland fisheries are feeling kind) and a couple of Oscars :-)

There are about 30 tanks of various size up and running at the moment.

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  • 1 month later...

If your tanks are centrally filtered with a single sump, you can automate feeding via the sump pump. Many pumps handle soft solids up to 6mm. Use a single auto fish feeder to dump 2-3mm sinking pellets into the pump intake and the filter will distribute over your entire system. I feed up to 60 tanks per system this way.

You can also feed live foods through your proposed drip system with a little planning. I periodically flood feed green water algae into my growout systems to obtain better fish colour.

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Do you really need to do this at all? Went to Europe this year for a month (during winter) and only lost a couple of inches of water. Just do a few good water changes before you leave and set up some auto feeders to feed around half what you would normally feed them. Neither of my six foot tanks had nitrates higher than around 60ppm. No casualties. I was so impressed with the eheim auto feeders that I use them all the time ( to prevent my kids from over feeding!!) NB it's important to use several feeders to spread the food around the tank and for redundancy, incase one clogs up.

Cheers, Lou

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If I put one of those inline irrigation filters on and then filled the innards with charcoal will that alleviate much of huge issues?

Cheers

On the right track but I would recommend something like this http://www.bunnings.com.au/filter-undercounter-stefani-double-stage-ucfa-02_p5090104

Pass the water through slowly; this will last for many months.

To test if the filter is still working, buy a chlorine test kit from a shop that sells pool chemicals.

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