recycle

I'm from the UK.....so know all too well of water rates. Even if you have your own water supply, you still have to pay water rates as 'rain or the potential for rain' will fall on your property.

Anyway,the magrove is a very interesting plant and them roots seem to do some nice stuff.

The one thing that I keep not seeing is how the various proposed recycle systems cope with phenols, hormones, pheromones and a host of other organic compounds.

The quotes on ammonia/nitrite/nitrates are all very well....but all of that is simplistically sort in box-standard aquarium filtration systems (OK, so it takes a little bit more effort to rid nitrates).

They key is to produce a balanced water with respect to minerals (and not having to add them either), yet is not such as to compromise the general health and growth of fish.
ie be akin to the normal water changes that we do.

Large-scale systems may not see problems with fish growth/development simply because they are 'large scale'.

It would be a great project to work upon......someone with an already existing sump and few spare hours might like to take this on.


ian

A Mangrove aquarium and pond.



Image from this Article by James C. Li below

toptropicals.com/html/aqua/plants/mangrove/mangrove_eng.htm

Mark

For all you guys wanting to give it a go Seahorse have magroves in at the minute. I'd say they might do well in a refugium with a light in a reef tank maybe, before they get too high.

Karl Dacus! Jeez , haven't heard that name in an age, great Alpine expert and all round interesting Man.

I remember using reeds to act as a filter when installing a pond fed by a stream, the reeds are cut, taking all of the material made that year from filtrate, the thicker they grew the cleaner the Water became due to heavier pollutants being physically trapped by the dense mat of fibrous Roots, here they are broken down by Bacteria and the resulting micro and micro nutrients are reabsorbed by the Reeds.


Kev.

igmillichip wrote:

The one thing that I keep not seeing is how the various proposed recycle systems cope with phenols,

hormones, pheromones and a host of other organic compounds.

They key is to produce a balanced water with respect to minerals (and not having to add them either), yet is

not such as to compromise the general health and growth of fish.

Here is an abstract from Aquatic Botany (vol. 2)
"Removal of phenol by water hyacinths, Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms, in static water was investigated.
A quantity of 2.75 g dry weight of this aquatic plant demonstrated the ability to absorb 100 mg of phenol per
72 h from distilled water, river water and bayou water. One hectare of water hyacinth plants is potentially
capable of removing 160 kg of phenol per 72 h from water polluted with this chemical."

I think that's a start and maybe why they changed plants a few times.
I dont know enough about plants to say which plant used extracted what from the water apart from the
micro/macro nutrients.

Considering the stocking density mentioned (10 platy sized fish per gallon) if the DOC's (phenols, hormones
etc) were allowed to build up without water changes i'd imagine the immune system of the fish would be
under serious strain and diseases would surely follow.
On a closed system this would surely fail unless a lot of meds were been used, but then why bother use the
plants instead of just chemicals and fill the fish with drugs.
I think the plants can do the trick but i just dont know how, or at least not yet. Leave it to mother nature, she'll
find a way.

The minerals in the water is another thing that could be a problem. What minerals do each of the plants take
up and how much?
When the water evaporates i dont think any minerals do and by topping up you are adding more minerals.
I think that could take time, testing, equipment and knowledge to figure out. Or if the whole process was
understood simply visually monitoring the plants might do it. Checking for deficiencies, growth rates etc..


@stretnik, Karl Dacus had done a talk before at one of the meetings and he touched on the subject of using
reeds and other plants as a way to naturally filter ponds. If i could just remember 1/2 of what he said ....

Cheers for that Platy and Kev.

One of the concerns that I had years ago when we were developing 'no-water change' system (and there was also the old Hockney tanks...for those who can remember) was that the focus was on the general nitrogeneous element of water.

Not wishing to get into the Oganic Aqua, or magic additives, or magical reverse flow anaerobic chamber magic tricks debate, I am still a fan of the frequent water changes to rid the phenols, hormones etc etc etc.

Plants are key to a recycle system.

Plant cells age and die.....compounds will be released from those cells etc etc and maybe will part-recycle minerals. (There is still some debate on the exacting nature of senescence in plants)

Also, we have exploited dead plants for years......peat, bog-wood, decorative mangrove roots etc etc. in aquariums and plant keeping.

In Orchid keeping, for example, the best growing medium that I ever used was the dead root of a fern (Osmunda).

Looking back over the years, I've found that some of the tanks that have been most successful have been those that are heavily planted yet I never bother to clear out the dead leaves or dead plants.
Not only were fish healthy, but growth rate was always pretty good considering that some were quite small tanks for the fish in them (show winning fish in some cases).
I never bothered to look further into that (my academic studies were focused into a different area of research).

Mature lived-in water (not dirty manky stuff though) has always shown benefits to many species of fish....so I feel that a method to somehow emulate that 'clean-matured-lived-in' water (whilst ridding of the unwanted bits) would be beneficial not just to the water bill, but also to many fish.

(I'm not being too scientific here, as it's saturday morning and I've just had an automatic self-change happen overnight when a cable tie came off a hose in a Discus tank and dumped the water on the front room carpet. Fortunately the pump was part of the multi-stage trickle system and so could only dump half the tank of water before the pump was above the water line!!!!....but it also fountained the water upeards and into the electric supply, I wondered why the rooms all sounded quite quiet when I woke up...electric tripped fortunately).

ian

Cool post lads and leads me to The question, How much effect do Hormones released into water have on Fish growth, I believe in it implicitly, you just need to look at Goldfish fitting their environment but thought I'd ask just to get the question to get it aired. I'm sure the owners of larger Fish would benefit.


Here's a neat Link

algaefish.do-tip.com/fish-habitat/fish-g...to-fit-their-habitat

Kev.

stretnik wrote:

Cool post lads and leads me to The question, How much effect do Hormones released into water have on Fish growth, I believe in it implicitly, you just need to look at Goldfish fitting their environment but thought I'd ask just to get the question to get it aired. I'm sure the owners of larger Fish would benefit.


Here's a neat Link

algaefish.do-tip.com/fish-habitat/fish-g...to-fit-their-habitat

Kev.

I had a quickie read of that link.....the colours of thhat forum are bit difficult to read.

Interesting takes.

There is an old addage that I keep hearing, and I wish it would stop....the addage being that a fish grows to the size of its tank. Not so.

In my personal definition, a fish will grow towards its maximum size (as determined by the genetics and physiology) if susained with appropriate nutrition and not inhibited in its growth.

Even if we ignore the hypothesis of 'growth inhibiting hormones', we are still left with a multitude of compounds that will build up in a tank that will inhibit growth either by way of direct growth inhibition or by way of compromising the anabolic activities within a fish.

If we take humans, a disproportionately high protein diet inhibts or stunts growth......almost contrary to what many believe. Why?
High protein means that we need to rid ourselves of amino-acids (we don't store amino acids), that is effectively meaning we need to rid ourselves of ammonia.
Getting rid of ammonia is energy expensive....and the body will react to rid ammonia in preference to using the energy to build the body. If we have an unbalanced diet, then we could spend too much energy simply trying to rid ourself of exess protein/amino acids. We need a good fat or carbohydrate balance to keep things gong in the proper direction.
Now, as with anything like this, it is not fully as simple as that as many back-up systems come into play.

(High protein in fish will not have the same effect as the freshwater fish does not need to spend that much energy on ridding ammonia {unless it is a mudskipper} and little energy is required to keep bouyant.)

Back to fish, frequent water changes will give the fish an effectively larger volume of water in a given time. Growth inhibitors will thus be acute rather than chronic. Phenols, for example, tend to have a short half-life in fish (a day or so)....but if the phenols are chronically high in the water then the fish will have a chronic blood level of them.

In some fish species, there is also a mechanical inhibition to growth.....
at certain sizes in a fish's growth its size and proportions may require differring proportionate amounts of energy to swim against the current. If it's size is such that needs to expend arge amounts of energy on swimming against the current then that could be a growth inhibitor.

Speculating, maybe some species of fish will end up with some very large specimens if they are in a shoal.......the leading fish may 'buffer' against the growth inhibiting force of water current.

I'd better stop there. For the moment anyway.

ian

No BS, fished out a small piece of celery leaf with roots on it:) Found it in the jewel internal floating on the top. Three little roots and it looked alive and healthy, I put the stick in over a week ago. Amusing coincidence.

I want to put a lot of rock in my 54L to retard the flow and have plants root into this, not sure what rock to try and not sure what plants either.
The rock I want to smash into a chunky porour substrate to let the plant roots get right into it and to trap some nutrients ect while still allowing a decent enough passthrough.
I'll not be trying Mangrove for obvious reasons, my aquariums have a decent salt content, the capacity of the 54l is too small so I am looking at smaller ones. The tank it will be filtering will have no filter so ammonia will be the main food source but there will be some nitrates from the tank either way.

Some suggestions on rock\s and plants would be appreciated to give it a try. I will start off with a couple of mollies and go from , its a 90 litre tank so I am hopeing ai can put more fish in over time and I relaise I will have to put in fresh water, trying to see how much I reduce te addition of fresh water into the tank. This may not work or be ideal but I may learn a thing or two on my way.

Mark

Celery has tough fibers in the stem to aid rigidity so I'm thinking this is what you are seeing, now it there was some meristematic tissue attached it could be roots.

Kev.

You could Bolbitis fern near fast flowing water (not planted in ground though).

What about some Cryptocorynes? the marginal species, not the aquatic species (not that I've seen many fully aquatic cryptocorynes in large number recently anyway...although I think one shop had one specimen in all of its other Crypts).

Bolbitis is a bit of a trickier plant to get right; it takes time to establish and I hear a number of poeple have trouble with it (probably because it is not anchored on rock or wood and in a stagnant part of the tank??)

Bolbitis I will try get, many thanks Ian.

I am planning to have the plants above water, and not rooted as in buried roots, I want to attach it to the surface rock and let it make its own way down through it as far as possible. The very top layer of rock will not be submerged, maybe a few mm above the water, hopefully with the rock being porous this will pull water upwards a bit with just plant roots going below that level slightly deeper.

I am sure, due to my lack of starting experience with htis that htere will be slight adjustments needed here and there, I have less tanks now and a little more experiment time. I am quite looking forward to trying this, testing and documenting as I go along, my fist real fishy project and willno doubt have to lean on you all a bit as it moves forward.

Mark

Edit: I am wondering if I should add panels to the tank to channel water in a controlled manner rather like a sump and also place in a bubble currain at the bottom to provide some upwards water motion?

Why not just go with something like Lemna gibba, frog bit, Azolla or salvinia it reproduces really quickly removing excesses from your Tank?


Kev.

Kev, I am plant illerate. I will read up on those too.



Many thanks matey!
mark

Moringa?


Haven't found where I might get some but Moringa does some cool stuff, though I am not sure if it would be suitable.

hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Benefit-From-the...er-Purifying-Moringa

Mark

Don't tell me that you've been madly doing research all day Mark.

I found a nice little free paper on the drumstick tree.....this one may be of better use, but I'm not too sure if it is really the sort of thing that we are talking about here.

mrw.interscience.wiley.com/emrw/97804717...mc01g02/current/html

ian

igmillichip wrote:

Don't tell me that you've been madly doing research all day Mark.

I wish, after moving fish exploding heaters and setting up a large tank I am knackered. A bit of research and a read is a great way to relax:)


Thanks Ian, I will have a good read.


Mark
Am IT. I love working on problems and solutions, even if some of the science escapes me:)

Still reading, but the further I read the more I tihnk this would be more suitable as a stage of filtration rather than a complete solution. Maybe the first with coagualtion properties making it easier to trap an increased amount through mechanical\biological filtration before the water passes to an, as yet, undetermined third stage. Hmmmm biosand, intersting


Back to researching coffee and cigs

Mark

Aye. I think that I'd said that my first stage would be a foam chamber, or a floculation chamber.

In nature, foaming, floculation or coagulation would be physical aspects of recycling.

Foaming a freshwater tank is not the easiest and you don't tend to find many people with Skimmers for freshwater. But, if water is heavily polluted then it will 'skim'quite easily.

I'm still a bit cautious over magic treatments.....in nature we don't find magical drumstick trees everywhere.
But we do find mosses, we do find normal sand, we do find clays, we do find decaying plants.

Now, what part does rain play in nature? It is important, but does that the fact that it occurs in nature mean that we have to emulate it?

In a system, the water is not actually static.....it appears stable yet not at equilibrium because it exists in an open system where losses are replaced.

Ian, am I at a loss of the content of rain water, yet more reading, but imagine, though I could be wrong:angry: is that it is a cycle of cleansing, and dumping back into the supply, like converting to steam, not exactly, and collecting and adding back to the supply? patience with me please:blink: EDIT Read more about it, not so:)

OK so I have decided, crushed rock is not suffieient. Constructing a biosand filter in conjunction with palnts is what I am attempting to do I am guessing.

Found a useful test procedure for obtaining the most efficient particle diameter particles for suitable filtraion. Thsi process can be useful to remove parasites and cysts aswell as other nasties. Cool stuff indeed

www.biosandfilter.org/biosandfilter/file...sis_Instructions.pdf

Mechanical filtration first for the heavier waste (gravel?), then Biosand filtration feeding into a planted filtration system and back into the tank, if correctly set up I am hoping something similar this would reduce water cahnges and wouldn't cost a fortune to construct at all.


More reading.


Mark

Mark, I sometimes ask many rhetorical questions.

Rain will not cleanse per se. If you take a gallon of water, evaporate off a pint of it and then add the condensed pint back you'll end up with what you started (plus or minus a few gases, and a few micro-changes in chemistry).

Now we know that in nature you get evaporation of bodies of water, and solutes in the water will become more concentrated.....when it rains the solutes become diluted. Sometimes we try to emulate that when breeding certain types of fish, but it is a different type of water cycling to the notions here.

In freshwater, minerals are being lost as the water enters the sea (the sea is becomming more and more concentrated in dissolved salts). When rain falls it may leach minerals from the ground and thus keep the system 'open'. There will be seasonal and yearly variations, but in general and for all intents and purposes the system is stable (but that doesn't mean the same from second to second or from season to season)......it's a bit like the complex mathematics that are at play in how we 'apparently' dis-obey the laws of nature by being a living being (the only problem is that one needs to look at mathematical models that are different to simple chemical reactions !!)

I have gone through a few good rresources, and that very thing was mentioned several times, and the maths involved, which is where I said "Steady on". Added to that is the amount of pollution is picks up along the way and the negative effect that it has on us living beings., quite a few health conditions are linked to such pullution.

I wish to try something as in below and will have trouble testing its actual success, measuring all parameters to get a valid result will be difficult for me.

A few modifications, a pump required and posibly a larger mm of sand media will be needed as flow is a concern with such a fine grain. Forgive the naff drawing

Water in a closed body is going to be difficult to retain in any quality, fresh supply will be needed just maybe not nearly as much, I am hoping for.




Mark

igmillichip wrote:

Aye. I think that I'd said that my first stage would be a foam chamber, or a floculation chamber.
In nature, foaming, floculation or coagulation would be physical aspects of recycling.
Foaming a freshwater tank is not the easiest and you don't tend to find many people with Skimmers for freshwater. But, if water is heavily polluted then it will 'skim'quite easily.quote]

I had a little laugh to myself there. It brought me back to trying a home experiment to prove to myself that skimmers dont work on fresh water unless (as you mention Ian) the water is heavily polluted.

I set up an acrylic tube with a pump either end pushing the flow of water against each other and air was introduced similar to what you would find on a skimmer for salt water.
It had a top like a collection cup and an adjustable valve for the air to escape.
The bottom could be closed so only a certain amount of water was in the tube at any time so i could increase the pressure in the tube hoping to be able to brake up the water as much as possible to force some sort of foam fractionating.
The counter current and air mix was tweaked constantly and all i was getting was clean clear foam spilling in to the collection cup.
This came to an abrupt end when the pressure got to much and the top blew, nearly blasting a hole in the timber ceiling.
I'll never forget the little grin i felt appear on my face. It didn't work.

Sorry folks, i know it's off topic but i just had to trow that in there.

Good science does not need all questions answered at once.

You could work on this project as an experiment....you need an Aim (obviously) but you need a Control. Make one change at a time. See how it all goes.

Simplicity may be a key point.

What could be more simple that undergravel fltration?......and what a revolution in fish keeping. I can't actually think of any breakthrough that out-shines simple biological filtration.

platty252 wrote:

igmillichip wrote:

Aye. I think that I'd said that my first stage would be a foam chamber, or a floculation chamber.
In nature, foaming, floculation or coagulation would be physical aspects of recycling.
Foaming a freshwater tank is not the easiest and you don't tend to find many people with Skimmers for freshwater. But, if water is heavily polluted then it will 'skim'quite easily.quote]

I had a little laugh to myself there. It brought me back to trying a home experiment to prove to myself that skimmers dont work on fresh water unless (as you mention Ian) the water is heavily polluted.

I set up an acrylic tube with a pump either end pushing the flow of water against each other and air was introduced similar to what you would find on a skimmer for salt water.
It had a top like a collection cup and an adjustable valve for the air to escape.
The bottom could be closed so only a certain amount of water was in the tube at any time so i could increase the pressure in the tube hoping to be able to brake up the water as much as possible to force some sort of foam fractionating.
The counter current and air mix was tweaked constantly and all i was getting was clean clear foam spilling in to the collection cup.
This came to an abrupt end when the pressure got to much and the top blew, nearly blasting a hole in the timber ceiling.
I'll never forget the little grin i felt appear on my face. It didn't work.

Sorry folks, i know it's off topic but i just had to trow that in there.

I bumped to Platy's post as I was busy writing my last one when Platy posted it.....it's fully on-topic.
Making a saltwater skimmer (we called them urine skimmers in the B&W days) was actually easy....a rena pump, a wood air-stone, a piece of tubing and a plastic coffee cup.

So, Platy's experiences are worth noting (and add a bit of light heartedness....no, actually, I didn't laugh...honest)

Mark i like the drawing. But is this not another method of mechanical and biological filtration?
I know there is a section for plants but i think finding out what plant can remove what from the water would serve the system better. Or an alternative to plants like organisms the would feed off the DOC's or are there bacteria that live in the likes of mud that could help beyond the nitrogen cycle?

There is an old member on here that has worked on fish farm closed systems that would only do a water change on his own tank's every 2 years.
He never fully explained why or how. Hopefully this will pull him out of the wood work. Did i really say hopefully

platty252 wrote:

Mark i like the drawing. But is this not another method of mechanical and biological filtration?
I know there is a section for plants but i think finding out what plant can remove what from the water would serve the system better. Or an alternative to plants like organisms the would feed off the DOC's or are there bacteria that live in the likes of mud that could help beyond the nitrogen cycle?

There is an old member on here that has worked on fish farm closed systems that would only do a water change on his own tank's every 2 years.
He never fully explained why or how. Hopefully this will pull him out of the wood work. Did really i say hopefully

Was thinking its pretty much how a river does it, partially anyway, in a very simplistic view of course, also I thought it would far be more efficient that a conventional filter. With less maint and superior quality warer coming out the other end. It needs not be so large, either, was not to scale, and our normal biological filtration does not remove other nasties that we have all suffered from, this system would be more effective in that repsect.

A fish farm would be dealing with a much larger volume of water which is an important factor too as well as maybe treatments and a hell of a lot of equipment.

The aim is to remove more pollutants and retain a better water quality, something conventinal filters are fairly poor at. Sure what else would I be doing, input appreciated though.

The thread was recycling, not filtration method used:)

Mark

Forgive me but I am a little dismayed at having my 10 second pic complemented and my few hours of reading and research shot down so simply.

Would a pressurized sand filter not have similar results, take up less space and are available off the shelf?
Maybe i read the posts wrong with my left handed brain that is now full of beer;)

The water in a river is only passing through where the water in a tank is just cycled around and around.
What other nasties would this remove compared to a standard tank and filter? (sorry this is the bit i am interested in).

Fish farm do deal with a greater volume of water but the stocking density can be a lot greater than we would try attempt in our home aquariums. the equipment would just be a diffrent means of dealing with mechanical,biological,chemical and parasitic filtration. In most cases not having to add chemicals beyond what we might use. There are always (unfortunately) exceptions.

I agree the topic is recycling and not filtration, but to recycle you need to filter out the nasties our bog standard filters dont do.

Anyway keep up the research, i think i have swilled enough beer this evening and will probably laugh at my posts tomorrow and add some info that is more beneficial.
I will put my worzel gummidge thinking head on tomorrow.

Mark. wrote:

Forgive me but I am a little dismayed at having my 10 second pic complemented and my few hours of reading and research shot down so simply.

i have tried drawings like that before and failed miserably.
i didn't mean to disrespect the effort and research you have done for this post. My typing tone may have been wrong.

Darren.