Hello Everyone,
I am going to try and give some details about my Automatic water changing system I have for my discus. We all pretty much know that water changes are a must when you are caring for discus, the more changes the merrier these fish seem. So Let's move on...
I have a 210 gallon aquarium with 20 discus, 10 otto's, about 10 black mollies(they break up the colors with the discus and also eat any algae on the few plants I have in the tank), and a school of cories, around ten of them. I have the tank heated to 86. For filtration I have two Hydro sponge IV's and two marine land canister filters 304? I am using the original lighting that came with the tank, two 48 inch florecents.
It was taking me around two to three hours to do my water changes about twice a week. I was doing about 65 gallons at a time, it took forever to drain and refill. I decided it was time to figure something out to do this task for me. I ordered a 55 gallon drum, two of them actually but I'm only using one of them right now. It cost me $200 for both of them including the shipping cost. I went online and bought a Kent Marine 50 GPD reverse osmosis sytem for about $240. I also bought a 300 watt aquarium heater to put in the 55 gallon drum to heat my water. An air stone was later added to keep the water moving so the water would heat uniformily. All of this by the way is being done in my garage next to the deep sink, makes for an easy drain plus a water source for my R O system. Okay, so now I was bucketing in the pure water after adding some R O right to the pure water to make it fish healthy, lol. After thinking a bit, and looking at various parts I had in my garage from my last aquarium set up I saw my aquarium pump I use to have running my wet/dry sump. I ultilized it as my pump to pump the water out of the 55 drum. I drilled a hole in the side of the drum and installed a bulkhead fitting so I could attach some PVC piping to it. I then attached the piping to the water pump. From the pump I ran a 3/8 inch garden hose under my house and up through the floor to my tank. My tank is a reef ready tank to I have two overflows installed in it already, awesome! I plummed the garden hose into one of the overflow drains under the tank. So now I have water coming into my tank via the overflow, once the overflow fills up it starts to overflow into my tank thus raising the water level in the tank. So now the water needs a way out...... The other overflow was plummed using the remainder of the garden hose, under the house and out the side of the house to the lawn it went. When my tank goes through a water change it does it all by itself! Water comes in one of the overflows and water flows out through the other overflow and into my backyard watering my lawn. The fish don't even notice when the change is occuring! It just happens. The only thing I need to keep up on is adding the R O right once the water has dumped into the tank. It takes anywhere from 30 to 35 hours to fill the drum. It depends on how cold the water is going into the R O system. Once it hits my preset limit, the electric float kicks on which in turn kicks on the water pump and drains it to my preset level. There is always about 10 gallons left in the drum for the heater to sit in. I also installed a failsafe water float shut off valve to prevent the overflow of the drum. So if power goes out I'll prevent a flood in the garage because the water will still be on making R O water. This system has saved me so much time during my weekends. With R O water I hardly have any algae growing at all and my discus love it. Less disturbance to them. I've attached a drawing of my system, it's pretty basic but it shows how I have it set up. Good luck to anyone setting something like this up, I had fun with it. Let me know if you come up with any improvements to this system.
Thanks everyone
I am going to try and give some details about my Automatic water changing system I have for my discus. We all pretty much know that water changes are a must when you are caring for discus, the more changes the merrier these fish seem. So Let's move on...
I have a 210 gallon aquarium with 20 discus, 10 otto's, about 10 black mollies(they break up the colors with the discus and also eat any algae on the few plants I have in the tank), and a school of cories, around ten of them. I have the tank heated to 86. For filtration I have two Hydro sponge IV's and two marine land canister filters 304? I am using the original lighting that came with the tank, two 48 inch florecents.
It was taking me around two to three hours to do my water changes about twice a week. I was doing about 65 gallons at a time, it took forever to drain and refill. I decided it was time to figure something out to do this task for me. I ordered a 55 gallon drum, two of them actually but I'm only using one of them right now. It cost me $200 for both of them including the shipping cost. I went online and bought a Kent Marine 50 GPD reverse osmosis sytem for about $240. I also bought a 300 watt aquarium heater to put in the 55 gallon drum to heat my water. An air stone was later added to keep the water moving so the water would heat uniformily. All of this by the way is being done in my garage next to the deep sink, makes for an easy drain plus a water source for my R O system. Okay, so now I was bucketing in the pure water after adding some R O right to the pure water to make it fish healthy, lol. After thinking a bit, and looking at various parts I had in my garage from my last aquarium set up I saw my aquarium pump I use to have running my wet/dry sump. I ultilized it as my pump to pump the water out of the 55 drum. I drilled a hole in the side of the drum and installed a bulkhead fitting so I could attach some PVC piping to it. I then attached the piping to the water pump. From the pump I ran a 3/8 inch garden hose under my house and up through the floor to my tank. My tank is a reef ready tank to I have two overflows installed in it already, awesome! I plummed the garden hose into one of the overflow drains under the tank. So now I have water coming into my tank via the overflow, once the overflow fills up it starts to overflow into my tank thus raising the water level in the tank. So now the water needs a way out...... The other overflow was plummed using the remainder of the garden hose, under the house and out the side of the house to the lawn it went. When my tank goes through a water change it does it all by itself! Water comes in one of the overflows and water flows out through the other overflow and into my backyard watering my lawn. The fish don't even notice when the change is occuring! It just happens. The only thing I need to keep up on is adding the R O right once the water has dumped into the tank. It takes anywhere from 30 to 35 hours to fill the drum. It depends on how cold the water is going into the R O system. Once it hits my preset limit, the electric float kicks on which in turn kicks on the water pump and drains it to my preset level. There is always about 10 gallons left in the drum for the heater to sit in. I also installed a failsafe water float shut off valve to prevent the overflow of the drum. So if power goes out I'll prevent a flood in the garage because the water will still be on making R O water. This system has saved me so much time during my weekends. With R O water I hardly have any algae growing at all and my discus love it. Less disturbance to them. I've attached a drawing of my system, it's pretty basic but it shows how I have it set up. Good luck to anyone setting something like this up, I had fun with it. Let me know if you come up with any improvements to this system.
Thanks everyone
