OK, What's the perfect water

Deuem

Yavimaya wrote:

Ammonia and nitrites will be CONVERTED 100%, there is no stripping of those chemicals to be done, after processing they result in nitrates, which then get used by the plants - the plants wont really strip 100% out (they can, people have systems running at 0 nitrates with healthy plants) in general, you must think of the nitrates as plant food, periods without food are periods where they can not "eat" and will slow on growth or plants may stress - obviously 1 day with no nutes is no big deal, but that is the principal.

The biological process in the beds is supposed to convert both ammonia and nitrite to nitrates that the plants can feed on. No? So if the GBs are loaded with the right bacteria, they should convert both fish poisons to Nitrates. Effectively this should lower or remove both Ammonia & Nitrites to Zero after so many trips through the beds. If the words "stripping out" is getting in the way, forget it. In my world we use it if something goes away. If you wish to use "converted" Ok. The bottom line should be that the Ammonia and Nitrites go away.

When you say "water colour changes" what do you mean? do you mean the white haze that ammonia gives water or do you mean you test kit colours?

My filtered tap water will change color in the tank from crystal clear to yellow very fast while the better well water would take a year. Yesterday I did a feed in and a dump out and changed all the water till it was crystal clear again and it started to turn yellow over night. This water will remain crystal clear in a water jug for a month. We use it to drink and cook with. Probably to many fish peeing in it.

Do not think of needing "water changes" in general, this isn't aquaculture, you will need top up water whos amount will depend of temperature, humidity, size of exposed surface area, amount of plants, type of plants and transpiration rate of said plants.

Seems like you did not read what I wrote as I intended it to be read. Let me try again. I have 2 FTs, one for AP and one for the family. I want one AP unit inside and one AP unit on the balcony. I want to use the family FT to run the balcony AP water supply. It is too far away from each other to feel safe with them connected all the time and my family FT is hardened glass so I can't go drilling holes in it. So I want to use that water I remove every week to supply the balcony unit. about 120L per month of water changes that currently goes down the drain. If indeed the balcony unit is setup well enough and has enough bacteria to convert Ammonia and Nitrites to Nitrates and use them for a week or more I will be happy. If and this is the big if, it will convert out the fish poisons to zero, I think I can then recycle it back to the master tank and use it again and only supply the system with new water that was lost due to usage or evaporation. If the water out on the balcony is too clean I could always add a couple of stinky fish to it. I have hundreds of them now. If I change over to the expensive new mineral well water I would like to make the most of it till it gets used up. If I get kicked out of the AP club because I want to recycle water, So Be It!

you will likely need not even need 120l per month once you have both systems full, however so waters don't mix, you will need another 120l tank to move water to and from when doing changes.
you only need to top up for evaporation, not throw any water away.

I will transfer 30 liters a week, not 120L at one time. The balcony system might be only 30 to 50 liters in total. With more water out in the beds. I currently own 30 L portable water jugs. One can place a pump in them. So I plan on pumping out 30L a week from the balcony tank, holding it in the jug, Sending over via a pump and hose used 30L from the Family FT full of new ammonia and nitrites, then pumping the 30L jug back to the FT. Can be 1 hose or 2 hoses depending on the plumbing. What ever water I lost will be replaced with the new expensive well mineral water. Should be about 20L a month. to get this water to the tank or AP is about 1 dollar per liter so I don't want to waste much of it.

Anything that flowers will be outside. let the bees do some work for me.

Yavimaya

ok well there is no "if" when it comes to the bacteria being able to do the job you want.
they WILL process your inside fishtank water just fine.
however surely you have a pump and filter attached to the aquarium to keep the fish alive in the first place, so there would already be no ammonia and only nitrates.
adding this water to the AP system will work fine, taking water from the AP back to the inside aquarium.... that depends on if the AP system water parameters are ower than the aquarium water (probably will be, but not guaranteed especially if you stock AP system with many fish).

certainly a good way to go instead of doing water changes inside, just keep lots of plants and not too many fish outside and you are 99% guaranteed it will work just fine, but dont expect to be putting 0 nitrate water back into the aquarium.....

It sounds like you havent used this mountain water yet, have you ever tried fish in it?
it may be too hard for some fish or the minerals (e.g zinc) could be too high for fish, make sure you do your tests.

Deuem

Yavimaya wrote:

ok well there is no "if" when it comes to the bacteria being able to do the job you want.
they WILL process your inside fish tank water just fine.

This is what I am hoping for. If it ends up just being a one way trip, then at least I get a usage out of the FT water rather then flushing it down the drain. For over 10 years we have dumped 30 liters a week.

however surely you have a pump and filter attached to the aquarium to keep the fish alive in the first place, so there would already be no ammonia and only nitrates.

Since the Family FT is only 300 liters it is not large enough to add all of the bio filters the larger tanks have under the stand. It has no Ammonia or Nitrite removal system, just a long tray of filter floss to take out solids. I do need to find some more bags of charcoal. They are hard to get here. The Tap water is cheap and most just flush out the tanks.

adding this water to the AP system will work fine, taking water from the AP back to the inside aquarium.... that depends on if the AP system water parameters are lower than the aquarium water (probably will be, but not guaranteed especially if you stock AP system with many fish).

At the moment I can't find a test kit so I will be depending on color and smell to get by.

certainly a good way to go instead of doing water changes inside, just keep lots of plants and not too many fish outside and you are 99% guaranteed it will work just fine, but don't expect to be putting 0 nitrate water back into the aquarium.....

I doubt if the NITRITE count will go to zero in a week. As far as I understand NITRATES, they don't bother fish. I can only hope that the Ammonia and Nitrite counts will go down enough to recycle it. If not I toss it out.

It sounds like you haven't used this mountain water yet, have you ever tried fish in it?
it may be too hard for some fish or the minerals (e.g zinc) could be too high for fish, make sure you do your tests.

No, I have not had the chance to use it yet. The owner was going to give me a water report I could go over. Still waiting for it. I am not too worried about the water. Further down the mountain are many ponds and they are all crystal clear and full of fish. You could drink that water with no problem. Due to humans, at some point down the line, maybe 2 miles, this water is then turned over to the sewage systems and used to flow house hold waste down the street pipes. Our area is surrounded by small mountains and all of the mountain streams and well waters get used for flushing the waste. Funny Huh, On the front end we need to pay for it, on the back end ( pun intended ) they can't give it away. I know of one section where the well water not used, dumps right into the septic lines 3 meters away. All of our wells are overflow wells and never stop running. Maybe you could call them a spring.

Yavimaya

it is good to hear the fish ponds down stream, but dont just assume.
fish are way more sensitive than people, so never use (or listen to) the "its ok for people, must be ok for fish" mentality.... there is also a HUGE difference between drinking something sometimes and being submerged in it 100% of your life....

Try to get an aquarium test kit, you will need it one day.

If you can not have a filter, sand down the bottom of the tank can help a lot, i have run a few outdoor ponds with no filtration except sand on the bottom and plants to remove nutes.

Nitrites will be zero in a week (after your system is cycled to the right bioload), nitrates which are the last step probably wont be zero, but low levels are just fine.
do not think of nitrate as being non toxic, it is toxic, it is just the least toxic out of the 3.

Deuem

Yavimaya wrote:

it is good to hear the fish ponds down stream, but dont just assume.
fish are way more sensitive than people, so never use (or listen to) the "its ok for people, must be ok for fish" mentality.... there is also a HUGE difference between drinking something sometimes and being submerged in it 100% of your life....

Ok, confused on the fish part. If they are way more sensitive then people they why the worry for me. What I am saying is that it is the same water that they bottle. And the ponds are crystal clear. Some ponds here you can walk on. So if I had to chance it, this pond would be first to drink. By the way, no one has told me anything about this pond. It is on private land and hard to get to. Deep in a valley.

Try to get an aquarium test kit, you will need it one day. The moment I can find one. I will.

If you can not have a filter, sand down the bottom of the tank can help a lot, i have run a few outdoor ponds with no filtration except sand on the bottom and plants to remove nutes.

At the moment, sand is not an option for me. Most all of it here is sea sand and full of salt. We have to get sand from a distance. Without CO2 I have never been any good at FT plants. I do have a cabinet above the tank and was thinking about doing something up there in canisters. Like the plastic screw on canisters people put on water lines. If it was higher it would need to be under pump pressure.

Nitrites will be zero in a week ( GOOD ) (after your system is cycled to the right bioload), nitrates which are the last step probably wont be zero, but low levels are just fine.
do not think of nitrate as being non toxic, it is toxic, it is just the least toxic out of the 3.

Even in this thread one member has very high Nitrates in the hundreds with no problems and they have trout. I guess if the nitrate count is high after a week that I could add a lot more plants to eat it up. For the balcony AP unit to give me back a high Nitrate level it would mean to me that I had to give it a high Ammonia and Nitrate level to start with. Then either the plants are full or I should water the house plants with it.

Yavimaya

i dont mean you when i talk of the water, the concern is only for the fish and the fact that here atleast, bore water can be full of minerals from old mines, etc.

nitrates can build up if not removed (but the plants will do this), you dont need high ammonia to get high nitrates after time

Deuem

Ok, on the mountain I am 100% sure there are no mines around it. But I can see if a mine crossed the water table it could cause a problem. A similar reason is why our village wells are shut off. People drove concrete piles into the water table and screwed up the water. A shame.

Where would you say the nitrates come from?

I would need to test the mountain well water on my 10 liter tank and see how the fish live.

I am hoping that the plants and bed will do their thing and take out as much as they can. Without a test kit I will never know for sure.

Alien Minnows: A side note, they are cannibals for sure. They seem to want to fight over food to the death if need be. I feed them powder but if one gets ahold of a large part that won't fit in their mouth, they swim around with a basket ball in their mouth. Then every other minnow will attack him to take it away. If one really wants it, it will hit it broadside with a lot of power and take out a chunk of meat. At that time it is all over for that fish. They all gang up on it and eat it bite by bite while it is alive and trying to avoid them. Within a few minutes all that is left is a bone skeleton. I am doing my best now to try and not get and food chunks mixed in with the feed. So it is Alien Minnow war in there.

Not to mention that my white carp has now doubled in size since I added the minnows. He has to be picking at least one or 2 off a day. Before minnows he was 4 inches long. He is now over 6 inches long.

Fish Story: When I put the gravel back in the tank I just poured in in the center and left it. The wife looked at me and asked if I was going to rake it out. I said No., The white carp will do it for me and do a better job. A week later all of the gravel is now level and spread across the entire FT bottom. All he does 24 hours a day is dive his head into the gravel, take a big mouthful of it and head for the surface where he cleans it for me. then as he is swimming he spits it out all over the place. It drives the Minnows crazy. They think it is food and all swarm after it.

I feed the fish 3 times a day over a 15 minute time and stop when they stop eating so none of them are staving. Probably over feeding them but it is so much fun to see them swarm the top of the tank and go crazy. I have a fish frenzy 3 times a day. Even with the full FT hood they are now splashing water out of the tank.

Wildbillnye

Deuem wrote:

Ok, on the mountain I am 100% sure there are no mines around it. But I can see if a mine crossed the water table it could cause a problem. A similar reason is why our village wells are shut off. People drove concrete piles into the water table and screwed up the water. A shame.

Where would you say the nitrates come from?

I would need to test the mountain well water on my 10 liter tank and see how the fish live.

I am hoping that the plants and bed will do their thing and take out as much as they can. Without a test kit I will never know for sure.

Alien Minnows: A side note, they are cannibals for sure. They seem to want to fight over food to the death if need be. I feed them powder but if one gets ahold of a large part that won't fit in their mouth, they swim around with a basket ball in their mouth. Then every other minnow will attack him to take it away. If one really wants it, it will hit it broadside with a lot of power and take out a chunk of meat. At that time it is all over for that fish. They all gang up on it and eat it bite by bite while it is alive and trying to avoid them. Within a few minutes all that is left is a bone skeleton. I am doing my best now to try and not get and food chunks mixed in with the feed. So it is Alien Minnow war in there.

Not to mention that my white carp has now doubled in size since I added the minnows. He has to be picking at least one or 2 off a day. Before minnows he was 4 inches long. He is now over 6 inches long.

Fish Story: When I put the gravel back in the tank I just poured in in the center and left it. The wife looked at me and asked if I was going to rake it out. I said No., The white carp will do it for me and do a better job. A week later all of the gravel is now level and spread across the entire FT bottom. All he does 24 hours a day is dive his head into the gravel, take a big mouthful of it and head for the surface where he cleans it for me. then as he is swimming he spits it out all over the place. It drives the Minnows crazy. They think it is food and all swarm after it.

I feed the fish 3 times a day over a 15 minute time and stop when they stop eating so none of them are staving. Probably over feeding them but it is so much fun to see them swarm the top of the tank and go crazy. I have a fish frenzy 3 times a day. Even with the full FT hood they are now splashing water out of the tank.

lol, that's awesome, save for the cannibalism.
my gold fish enjoys a lil fish now and again. nature in action.

Deuem wrote:

Yavimaya wrote:

it is good to hear the fish ponds down stream, but dont just assume.
fish are way more sensitive than people, so never use (or listen to) the "its ok for people, must be ok for fish" mentality.... there is also a HUGE difference between drinking something sometimes and being submerged in it 100% of your life....

Ok, confused on the fish part. If they are way more sensitive then people they why the worry for me. What I am saying is that it is the same water that they bottle. And the ponds are crystal clear. Some ponds here you can walk on. So if I had to chance it, this pond would be first to drink. By the way, no one has told me anything about this pond. It is on private land and hard to get to. Deep in a valley.

Try to get an aquarium test kit, you will need it one day. The moment I can find one. I will.

If you can not have a filter, sand down the bottom of the tank can help a lot, i have run a few outdoor ponds with no filtration except sand on the bottom and plants to remove nutes.

At the moment, sand is not an option for me. Most all of it here is sea sand and full of salt. We have to get sand from a distance. Without CO2 I have never been any good at FT plants. I do have a cabinet above the tank and was thinking about doing something up there in canisters. Like the plastic screw on canisters people put on water lines. If it was higher it would need to be under pump pressure.

Nitrites will be zero in a week ( GOOD ) (after your system is cycled to the right bioload), nitrates which are the last step probably wont be zero, but low levels are just fine.
do not think of nitrate as being non toxic, it is toxic, it is just the least toxic out of the 3.

Even in this thread one member has very high Nitrates in the hundreds with no problems and they have trout. I guess if the nitrate count is high after a week that I could add a lot more plants to eat it up. For the balcony AP unit to give me back a high Nitrate level it would mean to me that I had to give it a high Ammonia and Nitrate level to start with. Then either the plants are full or I should water the house plants with it.

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Deuem

I was told that I need to wait 2 more weeks to get the report on the mountain well water. I wonder if I ever will get it. I would like to drink a better water if possible.

Wildbillnye

my bbq sauce and ash mixture worked quite well. the corn I used it on is greener, fuller, and holds water better

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Deuem

I started to add some ash but all the BBQ sauce goes into me. If and when I am finished with it, the plants are more then welcome to it.

Wildbillnye

Deuem wrote:

I started to add some ash but all the BBQ sauce goes into me. If and when I am finished with it, the plants are more then welcome to it.

when the bottle is virtually empty I'll fill it up with water to get the remnants. apply ash conservatively for it'll raise the soils ph.

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Wildbillnye

next I'll try adding ash to one and bbq sauce to the other to see if it's as good as I think it is. I feel like it brakes down into plant food quite well and the sugars support microbiological activity.
I also want to do an experiment using only the bbq potion on plants in a gravel medium.

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Deuem

Then why not just try sugar, It would be cheaper, or is there something else in the bbq sauce as well.

Wildbillnye

Deuem wrote:

Then why not just try sugar, It would be cheaper, or is there something else in the bbq sauce as well.

Tomato paste, vinegar, spices. All good in their own way, in conservative amounts.
instead of throwing away a bbq sauce bottle I fill it with water and add a few pinches of ash and shake. The corn I use it on is definitely showing significant growth over the control corn.

bbq corn

plain water corn.

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OK, What's the perfect water

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