Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey everyone,

I am new to the forums, and I have been using general tap water in my system.

I would like to make it as organic as possible.

One of my major concerns is I have no water filtration system to clean out all the junk that is in general tap water.

Would anyone be willing to guide me in setting up a good water filter system, so my fish have fresh pristine water.

Thanks,

Thawee

Town water usually has been chlorinated. This can cause fish deaths. There are a number of ways to remove the chlorine from the water:
- Leave water in open bucket/drum to allow the Chlorine to evaporate - I don't know how long to leave it?? Anyone?
- There are proprietary preparations to remove the chlorine.
- If there are solids in your water, settling should help.
What else do you think is in the town water?

Other considerations:
- Be considerate of the fish, don't add too much water at a time. Rapid swings in temperature, pH and ammonia levels can cause issues.
Regards,
Tony
Tony

Either go with a RO system or find good well water and lug it like I do. Ok, I bought a little wagon.

Thanks for the input,

I was looking at RO water filter, but I don't know how I would go about adding that to my system?

Does it attach to the tank, and filter the water constantly or do I filter the water with it, and add the filtered water to the system by the gallon full?

Also does RO remove calcium from the water?

Depending on how large of a unit one buys. Most people just get one here for their drinking water. It is an extra faucet at the sink. They will take out about 99.9% of everything. Our bottled drinking water is all RO water. Basically it is almost pure water. It is 1 to 3 microns down from distilled water. If you wanted to remove even the last few trace problems then they add a couple of more filters. It all depends on the membrane size of the filter as to what will get thru. At the micron level. If you are worried about your tap water for the fish, then what about the family? They are a thousand times more important.

It would need to be used only for fill water. There is a lot of waste water in the usage of these things. It is not a good ratio but the end result is very clean, drinkable water. You lose more water then you get. If I was to put one on my terrible tap water, I could then drink it. When the RO membrane gets full, they just stop working and all water goes to the drain. I think the system I was looking at a few years back was 3 microns. So anything larger then that was rejected. They do smaller now. With 90% of our water being polluted, this is becoming a big business here. Units go for several thousand local dollars and up.

Since the waste water of our units goes to the drain it would be impossible to hook it up to the tank. It would empty the tank in a few hours. So I use good clean well water from a local well. We drink this water also. No matter what I use I hold it in a large 30L water jug for at least 3 days with an air stone in it. It gives the new water O2 and it should blow off any unwanted gases, if any. At the moment my FT and this jug are at room temp but I could always drop a heater in the jug if needed. Most of the year my problem is the water getting too hot.

My kid likes to buy small song birds, they come home all happy and singing, they eat their food and drink the tap water and dead in a few days. Hamsters, dead in a week. Fish in the tap water will last 3 days no matter how I filter it in the tank first. (no RO) Turtles maybe 2 weeks to a month. Think there is a problem with the tap water? From one human to another take care of the family first. Fish are replaceable. Kids are not.

I used to teach kids and I started to see more and more of them with slight brain problems. Loss of concentration. losing the ability to think straight. Not like when we were kids. My kids friends cant even figure out simple problems anymore. For all of the above reasons is why I am here. Our veggies are mostly water.

Deuem

Thanks for the input,

I have a Burkey water filtration system for the house. We I've been using it for at least a year or more now.

My major concern for my aquaponics system was that maybe the tap water was adding too many things to my system and is causing the nutritional deficiencies that I see in my plants.

I was hoping there was a good water filtration system that would allow me to clean up the water going into my system so all I had to worry about was just add what is missing from it.

From the sounds of it I could call about the current water filtration system I have for the family and see if maybe it will work just as well.

I was hoping that someone on this forum has a good water filter system setup to help them control the water environment in their aquaponics.

Is it safe to use rainwater the reason I ask is because the shingles on my roof that the water runs across fills the water with little shingle particles and whatever toxins that are on my shingles.

We just purchased a RO unit for the drinking water in the house. Expect it in 2 days. Takes a few minutes to install to the kitchen tap and it sits on the counter. I will have to see how it works out but like you said it is very easy to add things you want and very difficult to remove things you don't want. I don't want to use our rain water, too much acid in it. It streaks the cars windows as it is. Since my entire reason for being here is to know what is in our food, Starting with RO now sounds the best to me. I was using the well water and about 5 days ago someone spiked it and a 10% water change killed a lot of our fish, the rest are still Zombies. People are mean or stupid and don't care what happens to the next person. If I can't find a better sealed well I will be using all RO from now on for everything.

We too have purchased a waterbar countertop water purifier ( http://www.bestbrandappliance.ca/en/cat ... Water-T6-B ) in our home. Our tap water is chlorinated and when I asked suggestions here before few months I got suggestions that chlorinated water is harmful. Now I feel that I have created a safe environment in my system.