recycle

ok for a bit of a read. wat would one need to do to fully recycle water from the tank?

Cant say I knwo mate, but I would think that if it was practical we'd all be doing it


Mark

I think the best option would be to pump it through an RO unit, but you would lose about 90% of the water.

You could also run it through a diatom earth filter and treat it to remove any Nitrates, dissolved organic compounds etc..

Neither method would be cost effective.

Anyone any other ideas?

I have looked at this in general in the past and read bits and pieces, most recycling is water used for another purpose after use as it is not fit for it's previous uses like consumption or in this case an aquarium.

I am not up on the science, would plants do this for you? Run it through a cardon filter & hydroponics system?
Would someone with the knowledge explain why this wont work?



mark

Awful just awful typing sorry:blush:

oh Ian, where art thou

If converted to steam and recollected, would this be usable?


mark

very interesting indeed John

JohnH wrote:

Until he arrives I'll tell you that some years ago I experimented with 'used' water, running it through various filter media - carbon and Zeolite seemed to be best and I re-used it, probably in error, but had no drastic losses but was never 'easy' with it because I have to say I didn't really understand the science behind what I was trying to do.
I have a friend who works in a Water Treatment plant off the Shannon and the last phase of treatment used before the water is returned to the River is it is run over a bed of ordinary reeds and they seem to do the trick purifying the water, but that's fine for a treatment works - the problem would be to replicate the reed 'bed' on a much smaller scale.
Another plant I'm assured is very good at removing pollutants from water is water cress - and water lettuce too. I was told this will even remove arsenic from water - seems a very tall order for a plant to be able to do but that was the advice given.

John

I tink this would be the way to go, and get some nice plants growing too but you may need a large water storage area. The missus has greenish fingers, strawberries and others, I have on occasion put water I have taken from the tank and watered these plants, but again the science, I have not read up so I can't tell if this will help hinder or neither.

Mark

RO it?

Kev.

Interesting topic.

I simply do the easy option of changing the water.

If I were to have a go at completely re-cycling the water, I'd go for the biological option first with minor mechanical bits rather than the wasteful and energy expensive methods of RO, de-ionising, distilling etc.

Even if you RO or distil, you still need to add a load of chemicals back to make it useful.

So....if we did an experiment, I think that I'd firstly make a 'foam-chamber' (a bit like a protein skimmer I suppose).
The through a mechanical filter.
Then pass through red clay (trickle).
Have shallow bed (with water sprayed onto the surface) and a deep bed biological filtration system.
Then pass the water over living sphagnum moss.

In that use zeolites (clay is a zeolite) or other molecular sieves to trap phenols and zinc and whatever molecular sieve is available for trapping whatever.

The test water to see what it is like. The problem is that it is not really just the ammonia/nitrites and nitrates that we need to rid from our water....so you need to be able to test for the other things as well.

I have some papers somewhere on experimental industrial bio-reactors....I'll dig them up and see if they are available on-line for free (I am fortunate enough to have an Athens account for on-line journals, but some are free to people without that).

Looking at nature....nature does a pretty good job of recycling, so why not look at her ideas first?

Other ideas..?

I suspect the same.

Don't buy fish by credit or laser card.....else they (big brother) will know you keep fish and may even try to tax you more.

Me?....I pay in cash for absolutely everything; no bank knows that I like to buy cheap brand baked beans, tesco midget gems, cheapo bog-roll, tonnes of cigs a day, L'oreal make-up, and aqua-safe from tesco.

I was, funnily enough, having a discussion today about masters degrees in water engineering and how few students seem to jumping onto those programmes......maybe with the requirement to really make sure that all citizens here are getting water quality that they are charged for will change that. (yep, I'm cynical)

As ever with "Them" nothing about water quality of a seaious nature will be done till there is an outbreak of some nasty on a wide scale, then something might be done. As for the leaks, they are just working out the best way to charge on a leaky system probably. If everyone refused the meters what in raality what could they do, it would need to be a nationwide effort. Any other metering external to our homes would cost such that it would negate any tax gained for the most part


Mark

What about if Ian and Colin(Puddlefish) put their heads together and devised a home water re-cycling kit, something similar to say a wine making kit. Then, put forward their idea to Gormley & Co. who could then sell to people like ourselves at a subsidised cost or via a grant.

Just an idea.

Dave

John i wouldn't be surprised but i'm also worried they might bring in a flatulence tax and we'l all be walking around with a meter on our tushies, which will be maintained via an m.o.t by the likes of south dublin county council, then there will be serious issues wit back logging

Before coming here I was bullied into getting a water meter fitted - they dug a hole in the pavement outside and connected the thing to my water supply pipe - and then sent me the bill for work done! - Needless to say they didn't get that paid!


John

Un f'n beliveable, though of course I believe it. Anyone digging outside my home if I owend it will be getting a dig. Any meter put in outside my premises will be getting dug up and smashed into a 100 pieces too., dont cate if I have to hire a kango and get a plumber and do it at 4am. Sometimes you gotta go the extra mile to make a point.

I aint putting up with everything, can't do anything about the banks rip other than put my cash into the credit union, €18 in my account for over a year, and whatever don't borrow, save up, never borrow, debt cost more!!!!!!!!!!!!! but I can take physical action re metering and I will if I am not in Finland in the next year or two. I'd have ripped it out of the ground again and again and again.

If we paid charges and had the best water in Europe then I actually wouldn't mind, the money is not going to go back into the water system but rather into the hole left by the bank bailouts, how we dont all get together and lynch our ministers is beyond me at this point.


Mark

The water meters will go outside your property. Were the valve is already connected to the main.
I have installed a few in the past couple of years on new houses. Not by choice of course.
I have also installed (for want of a better description) a sump that the main ESB cable goes through before entering the house. The leaves the mains sitting in a tank of water . What genius in the ESB came up with that one.

Anyway back to the topic.
I remember Carl Dacus talking at one of the ITFS meetings about natural filtration for ponds using different types of plants (i cant remember the plants). May be this could be duplicated in doors.
I know some mangroves can be used in fresh water to help filter it.
I have some info here somewhere on natural filtration only using plants. I will try find it.

If you keepa greenhouse you could do a plumbing job and run it through that, would take a fair few plants to filter water froma 450 litre aquarium efficiently would it?

I seriuosly doubt any sort of practicality for using this method for use with a large aquarium. Maybe a vat container several feet tall with layers of clay and other filtering substance where water is fed into te top and drips down to a lower compartment is run through plants and back in to a storage drum. The Vat might have to be 8 9 feet high and fairly wide, but could go out back, with one section of the side accessable to maintain the layers of filtering, sort of like a standerd filter cannisted bit opens from the side rather than on top. Obviously some design kinks to work out with sealing the side but?

This would be able to filter a large amount of water more efficiently maybe? It wouldrecude the plants needed and the maint to keep the plants too



mark

This is info borrowed from a fish farm in Texas that only use plants to filter there heavily stocked vats of fish.

There is 3 greenhouses totaling 7500 square feet.
Vats range in size from 55 gallon -300 gallon. I dont have the total water volume.
The turnover is 100 gallons per vat per hour.

The vats are lined up in green houses covered in a semi transparent material.
The vats are raised 6" off the floor and the floor is 6" deep with water. Planks on blocks are used as walk ways.
Th vats are screened off at the top and the water overflows on to the floor. From here the water goes to a large sump before been pumped back to the vats. No unnatural filtration is used.
2% of water was added per week for evaporation.

Firstly they used 2 types of plants in the vats and on the floor, Hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum) and nanjas grass (Najas guadalupensis)

Other plants tried that worked:
Bacopa, Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), red mangrove propagules.

A couple of years later they changed things around a bit and used water hyacinth and red mangrove (Rhizophora) normally found in brackish water but still can grow in fresh water.
The red mangrove would grow to tall so they changed it for a black mangrove (Avicennia germinans).
Black willow (Salix nigra) was also used in some vats.

Ammonia is the main uptake of the plants to grow and is not detected in the water.
Stocking density is based on 100 platy sized fish per 10 gallons (that's a lot of fish).

I remember reading an article from the old black and white days were there was a 3 tier tank with fish in the top 2 tanks and only plants in the bottom tank acting as the filter.

I think setting up a tank with a sump full of plants would work.
As the plants grow the older plants would have to be removed.
I would use a reversed lighting system. When the lights go off in the main tank the light comes on in the sump. This would avoid any pH swing during photosynthesis.

If i was trying this i would try it on a new set up with no mature filter added so there is only Ammonia produced (no Nitrite/Nitrate) for the plants to use as food.

Seems like a lot of work, though it works well.
I like the tiered tanks idea. A sump to filter my 450 would have to be either large or extremely dense maybe, for this I guess I would need to know the average ammonia outrput from the tank and the average take up of the plants used to get anidea of the requirements, how fast does it catch up with a stock increase I would also have to work out.

It is definately worth consideration and not impossibly expensive to put into practice. Even space wise it can work.

I would be pround of such a setup. There may be a "smug cloud" alert in Finglas:)

Mark

Mark i have photo's of the fish farm (not mine so i cant publish them here)and the amount of plants used seems very little for the amount of fish been housed.
One of the vats alone has 42 3' iridescent sharks.
The mangroves are the work horse of the filter system.
I have seen small mangroves used quite well on marine systems. A small plant can do a lot of work.

You could use a large plant pot beside the tank decorated with plants beside the tank so it looked like it had nothing to do with the tank at all. Just a plant in the room with a light over it. Preferably by a window for dded natural light.
This could be the sump with hidden pipe work.
If it looked decent enough the other half may not mind. You could even put some fairy lights on it at Christmas.

I remember that fish farm, but thought it was in Florida, I think I heard it on a podcast, if I recall correctly they went through various stages of plant filtration on this huge vast area, in fact I even remember seeing a pictorial of the setup, so maybe I am dreaming of the podcast

Anyway, there definitely were loads of mangroves used for filtering the water.

platty252 wrote:

Mark i have photo's of the fish farm (not mine so i cant publish them here)and the amount of plants used seems very little for the amount of fish been housed.
One of the vats alone has 42 3' iridescent sharks.
The mangroves are the work horse of the filter system.
I have seen small mangroves used quite well on marine systems. A small plant can do a lot of work.

You could use a large plant pot beside the tank decorated with plants beside the tank so it looked like it had nothing to do with the tank at all. Just a plant in the room with a light over it. Preferably by a window for dded natural light.
This could be the sump with hidden pipe work.
If it looked decent enough the other half may not mind. You could even put some fairy lights on it at Christmas.

Yes it seems the plants are way more efficient that I am giving them credit for. I think I am going to give this a go with a 54 litre I have here. Going to have a look online at plants suitable and see what comes up. It shouldn't be expensive at all so it is my price range at the moment for a project.

The effort to educate me is appreciated, thanks all:)



Mark

I havent seen a pod cast of it Andrew but it could be the same people. Some of the mangroves came from Florida. Although the pictures i have only shows one bush of mangrove per 100-150 vats.
The mangrove is only about the size of one of the smaller (55g) vats.

This was published in TFH April 2010.

If someone could find the pod cast that would be great.

Mark the plants i listed above have been tried and tested.
The only problem they had with the mangroves was they lost some while adapting them to fresh water.

without being funny,i think the best way would be to pour the waste water down the drain after all afaik it all gets recycled,lets just hope they dont bring in water rates

oh they are